


Tombstone: One More Sunrise

by AnonGrimm



Category: Tombstone (1993)
Genre: "Foul" Language, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Gambling, Gun Violence, Het Sex, Knife Violence, Major character death - Freeform, Murder, Mutilation, Prostitution, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-03-10 19:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13508151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonGrimm/pseuds/AnonGrimm
Summary: Wyatt and Kate share memories of Doc Holliday after his death, piecing the puzzle of the man together for each other, as much as they can. After the tales are done, Wyatt reflects on his debt to his friend at the side of Doc’s fresh grave.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> No part of this story is to be posted anywhere without the author’s permission. Thanks. Feedback and constructive critiques are welcome, too. Just email or tweet me.
> 
> Kate may have been Doc’s lover but Wyatt and Doc had a bond she couldn’t share. Wyatt and Doc represent the sort of friends that are rare these days – people who would kill or die for each other without thought or hesitation, sharing a deep love that was platonic but was nonetheless so intense that the men who played them in the film have been quoted as calling it a love story and “a love affair”. 
> 
> Kurt Russell: “Wyatt and Doc is one of the great love affairs of all time between two men. It’s a strange, tough, violent, deep relationship.” 
> 
> Val Kilmer: “He (Doc) had a real respect for Wyatt’s morality, even though he didn’t live it out, and Wyatt had a real respect for Doc’s sense of freedom and experience, so they each possessed a quality of life that the other didn’t have and they could live vicariously through each other. My feeling about the core of their friendship is that they were different men who found a kinship that each of them was willing to die for. It was a really deep love. ...It really is a love story...” 
> 
> ½ Historical, ½ Fictional. The characters, locations, situations, terminology and history involved here, I am borrowing from the creators of the 1993 movie ‘Tombstone’ (heavily borrowed from Kevin Jarre’s script). No disrespect is meant to their work. No money has or will be made with this.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

The enigmatic gambler and gunman had saved his life so many times – and then, with his dying words, he saved his life again. Doc had asked him to move on – to find Josephine and live a full and long life – for him. Wyatt intended to honor that wish even though, having faced death so often, he’d been paralyzed by a fear of life – or was it more than that?

A brunette woman of exotic beauty walked up to his table. She was dressed in funereal black, a drastic change from her habit of wearing scandalous shades of red. The bottle of whiskey in her hand was a common and almost comforting sight.

“Have another?” she asked.

The few other men in the saloon who bothered to watch them probably thought she was a prostitute moving in on her first mark of the day. None of them knew the history between them.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “Have a seat, Kate.”

She sat beside him and poured the liquor into his glass as she’d so often done for Doc. When Wyatt immediately tossed it back, she filled the glass again.

“Where will you go?” Kate whispered.

“Denver. You?”

“I don’t know. I may stay here.” She reached into a pocket in her skirts and pulled out a small engraved silver stirrup cup. Acknowledging Wyatt’s stare, she said, “I told them I was his wife, and they gave me his effects. The rest is in my room. I thought –” She paused, her dark eyes full of regret. “I think he’d want you to have the guns.”

Wyatt paled at the thought of it. “You may need them … a woman alone…”

“I have my Derringer and his knife. Please, Wyatt – he’d have wanted it that way.” Swallowing, he nodded. Kate smiled at him gently. “Did he ever tell you how we met?” Wyatt shook his head. “It was at Shanssey’s, in Fort Griffin, Texas. The Bee Hive, you remember? He said he met you there, too.”

“I’d love to hear about it,” he answered, curious about times and events in Doc’s life that he’d never spoken of.

“If you tell your story after,” she said with a smile. Her exotic Hungarian accent still sounded like honey.

She told him how she’d met Doc, and then he shared his tale. Kate watched him as he spoke and when he finished they both fell silent, lost in their memories of a very unique man.

********************************************************  
November 1877: Fort Griffin / the Flat, Texas – Kate  
********************************************************

“Ed Bailey’s a man accustomed to having his way and no questions asked,” John Shanssey told her gravely. “You don’t want to make an enemy out of a man like that, Kate.”

Mary Katherine Harony glanced at the owner-operator of the Bee Hive Saloon and smiled briefly before turning her dark eyes back to the corner table, where a slender and well-dressed man had driven two other players to fold.

He fascinated her and provided a welcome distraction from Bailey, whose advances she’d spurned. The wealthy gambler watched the remaining active player with a cold calculation. It was an expression she often wore herself.

“I answer to no man and I do what I please, go with whom I please, too,” she replied. “I’m tired of toughs and dusty drovers – I want a man who bathes … and I need a challenge.”

“That’s not a challenge, that’s Holliday – a vicious man, got consumption, too. You want to die, go ahead – but it seems a shame.”

She might have denied that but as the man called Holliday showed his hand and won the game, a rough cough broke his quiet smile. The other men at the table got up and hustled away, furtively – as if they didn’t want to insult the man but weren’t eager to remain in his company, either.

For an instant, he seemed pained – either by the cough or the hasty retreat of his company, she couldn’t tell. Then his expression hardened into a cold mask. He took a swig of whiskey from his glass, pocketed his considerable winnings in his expensive suit, and rose. To her surprise, he walked over to the piano.

The man who normally played the instrument was just returning with a drink but seeing who had claimed his bench, he returned to the bar. The gambler began to play, and the music was exquisite.

Shanssey sighed. “He was at that game for thirty-six hours, too and ought to be in bed.”

Kate smiled. “I’ll see what I can do about that.” Ignoring Shanssey’s surprise, Kate faced the pianist. “Holliday – does he go with the girls around here?”

The startled man stared back at her. “Nope – never saw him with one of ‘em, but they’re all afraid of getting sick, aren’t they? They won’t go near. He doesn’t go near them, either. Doesn’t seem interested.”

Kate smiled. This was the man, without a doubt – and she wasn’t afraid of his cough or the ivory handled guns he wore. “Maybe he just needs an invitation.”

Leaving both men to wonder, she crossed the room with a predatory grace. Her mark saw the movement and watched her come closer, never missing a note of the intricate music.

“You know Chopin,” she said with an inviting smile.

He managed to make a swift look up and down her body seem appraising, rather than lustful. “All my life,” he replied, “but he never writes.”

The words weren’t slurred, but she’d known too many drunks not to notice that this one, though he hid it well, was deep in his cups. His words were accented, spoken with the slight drawl of a Southern aristocrat, yet the clipped speech of the toughs was absent. Something about his manner intrigued her further and drew her in.

There was a table nearby with an empty chair and she gestured to it, ignoring the other patrons sitting there. “May I sit and watch you play?”

His smile was thin and sly. “Be my guest.” He slid down on the bench with a challenge in his eyes. Would the woman dare to sit beside him?

She would and did. He fell silent and played. Kate studied the pale slender fingers as they moved over the keys. They were groomed and clean – a gentleman’s hands. A watch fob dangled from a golden chain on his red silk vest, winking in the lights.

These things would have strengthened her resolve to pursue him on their own, but he was handsome, too, with dark ash hair and a trimmed thin mustache. A small triangle of hair under his mouth completed the frame for lips that could curl quite naturally into a genial smile or straighten into a cruel line.

As he finished the piece and his fingers stilled, he turned to face her. Mesmerized by his gray-blue eyes, lit by some secret thought that might have been humor or cruelty, she stared back as he rose from the bench.

“Evenin’,” he whispered, immediately stifling a cough. He was out the door of the saloon before Kate realized she’d been holding her breath.

She rose and went out into the mild cool of a Texan winter night. Spying his slim tall figure a short distance down the boardwalk, she hurried to catch up with him before he reached the hotel.

Hearing the quick approach, he turned fast to face her, his right hand on the gun holstered under his left arm. Seeing her voluminous crimson skirts, the hand fell to his side.

He watched her with an unnerving stillness and for the first time in her eventful young life, she was afraid – his silence and rigid, wary stance told her he might have shot her before he noticed she was a woman.

“I’m not after murder,” she answered his stare. He said nothing, but a cough broke his stillness. He controlled it and regained his motionless stare. “I wanted to speak with you – privately.”

“Wasn’t after company,” he drawled languidly. “And you shouldn’t be after me.”

“I’m not afraid of – it doesn’t worry me,” she hesitated. “And you’d be after my company quick enough, if you gave me a chance.”

Holliday sized her up as she stepped closer into a circle of light along the boardwalk. Controlling her breathing to make her chest rise and fall alluringly in the light, she stared defiantly back at him.

What changed his mind, she never knew, but she knew it when it happened. His expressive lips curved into a wicked smile, and he held out his hand to her – the same hand that might have ended her life moments before.

Walking up to him, she took his arm. He turned her toward his hotel and when they entered the establishment, they both ignored the desk clerk as he watched them climb the stairs.

**********************************************************  
November 1877: Fort Griffin / the Flat, Texas – Wyatt  
**********************************************************

The trail went cold as the Texas heat wrapped around him. He slumped in the saddle as he entered the town called the Flat, beneath Fort Griffin. Four hundred miles of antelope grass and vegas lay behind him, all the way back to Kansas.

Wyatt had hunted Dave Rudabaugh on a U.S. Deputy Marshal commission, his prey having been accused of robbing a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp. Heading for the Bee Hive, the largest saloon in town, he stopped to ask the owner, a friend, if Rudabaugh had been seen in his place.

John Shanssey confirmed the outlaw’s visit but added that he had already left. “See that gent at the poker table? That’s Doc Holliday. He was playing a few hands with your man. Maybe he knows where he was headed.”

“Holliday?” Wyatt scoffed. “He won’t talk to me. He hates lawmen by all accounts.”

Shanssey smiled. “He owes me one. I’ll ask him to help you.”

Wyatt had never forgotten his first look at Holliday. The slender man was a richly-dressed scowling cynic, whose eyes only came alive when he sensed trouble or was about to create it. It was the only time he smiled, too. His reputation was already infamous.

The dentist turned gambler had left his former life behind when he contracted tuberculosis. Heading west to a climate that might preserve his life, he’d moved from one gunfight to the next, leaving an unknown number of dead men in his wake – all of them guilty of insulting their opponent.

He was an ace gambler and a drinker who played better, and shot better, the more he drank. Though most of the men he killed had accused him of it, he didn’t cheat at cards – he didn’t have to – and it was always the accusers who died, even if Holliday was sick enough to cough up blood as he gunned them down.

Shanssey, having spoken quietly to Holliday, waved the lawman over. At loose ends, Wyatt sighed and approached the table.

Joining the game when he could seemed the simplest way to talk to Holliday without a confrontation that might be misunderstood, despite Shanssey’s help. So he did – though his money was running as low as his hope of catching his prey.

He never knew if Doc had heard of his reputation, either from Witchita or Dodge City, but something changed in the gambler’s attitude from the first hand Wyatt laid down. Not only was his reception warmer than the frosty sneer Wyatt expected, the least due a favor reluctantly repaid, but the Georgia dentist turned laconic gunfighter began to talk and the words were exactly what Wyatt wanted to hear.

“Rudabaugh … why yes, I took his money, too. He played worse than you.” The slight smile was almost secretive.

“Did he say where he was bound?”

“He likely did, though not to me. I shall make discreet inquiries and let you know what I find.”

“My thanks, Mr. Holliday.” Wyatt smiled at the thin man, impressed. “With a little luck, we’ll apprehend him quick.” He looked at his cards. “I call,” he said with a smile and showed his cards.

“Don’t use your own luck,” Doc had said with a saucy wink as he laid his superior hand down.

A few days later, Doc had news for him – Rudabaugh had headed for Fort Davis. Wyatt had wired the tip to Bat Masterson, his friend and the sheriff of Ford County, and would continue his hunt.

Before Wyatt left the Flat, he’d come to admire the gambler more than most. They spent only a brief time together then, but it was enough for Wyatt to see what Doc was up against, how he fought his illness with a maniacal lust for life, and the quality of the intelligent man who had only drawn one bad hand in his life: the disease that plagued him. Something about his freedom and his vast experience at such a young age captured Wyatt’s imagination – and though he couldn’t live the same way, he both admired and craved the simplicity of it.

Why Doc grew fond of him in return, Wyatt never knew, yet perhaps it was the same reason: the wild lifestyle outside the law drawing him into a fascination with the lawman that held to his moral code and lived it, too. How many others had chased Doc with a badge but no honor? Too many of them were no better than legal brigands.

The night he left, Wyatt wrote of the consumptive gunfighter:

I found him a loyal friend and good company.  
He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler;  
a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a  
philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long,  
lean fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the  
same time the most skillful gambler and nerviest,  
speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

Kate smiled. “I remember when I met you – I liked you about as much as Bailey. I was angry with Doc for helping you against Rudabaugh. He was more our kind than you were.”

“Ed Bailey,” Wyatt said after she’d been quiet a moment or two. “Isn’t he the trouble that made Doc head out to Dodge City?” Kate nodded. Her expression was soft and full of memories. Wyatt spoke again, calling her attention back to him. “Tell me about Bailey. What happened?”

Though she had nodded her ascent to telling the story, she was silent for a while longer. Wyatt didn’t press her but wondered what she was thinking. When she spoke, she started telling him about Bailey abruptly, as if she were escaping her other thoughts.

********************************************************  
November 1877: Fort Griffin / the Flat, Texas – Kate  
********************************************************

On the ship to New York City from Hungary, Kate had been filled with romantic notions of the new life she could have in a wild new land. Yet she hadn’t sought a husband and family. It was adventure and freedom she craved – not the safe and drab life of a domestic drudge.

Her travels and adventures landed her in Texas, where she became more skilled at her chosen trade: prostitution. She joined no house, obeyed no man or madam. Working as an independent woman, she refused to be tied down in any way.

Kate had also acquired a taste for the good life, many of the luxuries of which the men she’d been with couldn’t afford. She needed more than the common dirty cowherd. She might not have been able to describe exactly what she wanted, but on the night she entered Doc Holliday’s room, she found it.

The room was an expensive one; Kate had never been in finer. It even had a balcony overlooking the main street through town. The light breeze moved the open curtains in the dark.

She turned when a light flared and saw Holliday setting the glass over a low lamp flame beside a large bed. He watched her as men in bedrooms always did, with the heat of lust making their eyes appear clouded. Still, there was something different about this man – he was almost wary.

Kate knew how to soothe his concerns. She reached up behind her head to undo the top laces on her dress and then, sweeping her heavy dark curls to one side, turned her back to him, silently requesting assistance.

When his fingers finally touched her clothing, they were quite skilled at removing it. He took the Derringer she had concealed in her skirts without comment and set it on the nightstand. The corset and bustle were no trouble for him, either, and he offered her his hand to step out of the pile of feminine articles as smoothly as if he had asked her to dance.

She started to undo a small buckle at his waist that held the thin leather harness for his guns, but he stopped her and removed his coat and weapons himself. Walking to the other side of the bed, he draped the coat over a chair and set the guns on the other nightstand.

Kate followed him and began helping him out of the rest, laying it all over the chair. His body was as young as hers and his eyes told her he was no stranger to the charms of women, but something about his silence and hesitant air left her wondering what ghosts might haunt his mind.

When she pulled the covers of his bed away and laid down, the expression he turned to her might have been one of pain or grief.

“What is your name?” he asked abruptly, as if it truly mattered.

“Kate Elder. Everyone calls me Kate.” She moved over to make room for him. “What should I call you?”

“‘Doc’ is good enough.” Even then, she wasn’t sure if he would join her or not. Finally, he seemed to decide something and sat beside her. His hand reached out, not to touch her body, but to stroke her thick hair. “I’m not the safest man to bed with, Kate.”

“I’m not very safe in bed, either.” She grinned suggestively.

Her bravado was rewarded by the first charming smile she’d seen on his face and by his body sliding down over hers. That first coupling had been awkward – she was reminded of bedding a married man with a guilty conscience. Yet he was generous, gentle, and skilled – as no others before him had never been.

Much later, she would learn so much more about him: his full name, which he never allowed her to use in speaking to him or others, and many of his quirks. She also discovered that his gentle and easy lovemaking was rooted in the physical weakness his illness plagued him with, though if he were more rested, they could tear up a room in time.

She guessed his weakness was why he was so quick to draw a weapon, too. Although she learned in time that public opinion, the notion that his violence was a mixture of wanting to die and wanting to make others suffer, was off the mark. He was a gentleman of good breeding, and a Southerner would brook no insult to his honor. Beyond that, he was simply the faster man, every time.

His illness drove him to all his pursuits, but in the midst of living the life of a professional gambler, whiskey at hand night and day, he treated her like a lady with all the genteel manners he possessed.

Unfortunately, that had also been the source of their many fights later. She was not a lady – she had been a willful girl addicted to the wild life, and to men, to the adventure of separating them from their money. Doc wanted her to give it all up and be his woman. A lucrative offer but one devoid of the nightly excitement she craved.

Yet all that had unfolded over time. In the beginning, he never paid her because she never left. So he fell into including her in his nightlife and she enjoyed with him the fruits of his skill at cards. Before long, everyone knew she was the consort of Doc Holliday and no man would dare give her trouble.

Then there had been the incident with Ed Bailey that started them on their life of traveling together, often running from the law.

~ ~ ~

It was a repeat of the night she had met him – two players had dropped out of the game with one man in a top hat left, plus Doc and Ed Bailey. Kate had discovered that Doc had a reputation which had followed him to the Flat but Bailey didn’t seem impressed. The big sullen tough-looking cattle trader had even attempted to irritate the gaunt and elegant Doc by looking at the cards in the discard pile, the ‘deadwood’, something that was strictly against the rules of poker and generally forfeited the pot.

As Kate returned from the bar with a bottle of whiskey, Doc set his cigarette in the ashtray. He picked up a coin to flip it between his fingers and spoke the same warning for the second time, “Just play poker, friend.”

Bailey put the discards down at that familiar code for ‘stop cheating’ and glared at Doc. Leaning forward, seething with impatience, he responded, “I said that’s five hundred to you, Holliday. In or out?”

“Five hundred? Must be a peach of a hand,” he drawled, unconcerned as he smoked.

Kate smiled, refilling his engraved silver stirrup cup as she impulsively sat on his lap, holding a small cigar in her other hand.

“Oh, thank you, darlin’.” Doc put an arm around her and then, after an imperceptible startle, he turned playful. “Kate! You’re not wearin’ a bustle.” He looked to Bailey and added with lascivious delight, “How lewd!”

Kate smiled and stood to her feet again, wandering back to the bar.

“Come on, Holliday, are you in or out, dammit!”

“Why Ed Bailey, you look like you’re just about ready to burst.” He took a sip of his drink.

“Come on,” Bailey pressed, “show.”

“Well,” he began, slow to set the cigarette in the ashtray at his elbow, “I suppose I’m deranged, but I guess I’ll just have to call. Cover your ears, darlin’.” Doc covered the bet and showed his hand. Top Hat folded in disgust as he did so. “Isn’t that a daisy?”

Bailey stared the royal flush before he lurched back as he stood, overturning his chair. “Son of a bitch!”

“Hey,” Top Hat warned him, “Bailey, just settle down.”

“Shut up.” He glared across the table as he stood to his feet. “Take your money and get out. I’m tired of listenin’ to your mouth.”

Doc leaned back, a fingertip tapping on one of the twin ivory gun-butts sticking out from his coat. “Why Ed Bailey … are we cross?”

“Them guns don’t scare me. Without them guns you ain’t nothin’ but a skinny … lunger.” His voice had lowered to a hiss, trying to make the words as insulting as possible.

Doc barely looked offended but his manner was coiled and ready. Kate watched them both closely as Doc answered him.

“Why Ed, what an ugly thing to say! I abhor ugliness. Does this mean we’re not friends anymore? You know, Ed, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.”

Bailey reached for his pistol, but Doc had both of his drawn before it cleared leather, pointing the nickel-plated .38 Colt Lightning and .45 Colt Peacemaker on Bailey. He cocked them, watching eagerly until Bailey backed down. The saloon had gone dead silent. Then Doc laid the guns on the table on top of the pile of cash, valuables, and coins. He patted them, making the coins jingle.

“There, now we can be friends again.”

Bailey was boiling mad by then. The moment Doc’s hands moved away from the guns, he jumped up and lunged at the dentist.

Doc sprang up, grabbed him by the shirt and stabbed him in the side, before turning with him and twisting him backward onto the top of the next table, jabbing his fist into Bailey’s armpit as he went down. Bailey screamed and doubled over. Doc’s blow had seemed so light it shouldn’t be capable of the effect it had. When he twitched, crying out, Doc stood ready to strike again. The room was still but as he straightened over the crumpled man, they knew everyone in the saloon had seen the bloody knife in his hand.

The bartender had reached for the shotgun under the bar. Kate was faster. She pulled her Derringer from her skirts and pointed it at him.

“Touch that gun, I burn you down!” Kate covered the room as he backed off and then went to the abandoned poker table and began gathering up the pot quickly, scooping it into Doc’s black leather doctor’s bag.

Bailey curled into a fetal position and moaned. Eyes gleaming cruelly, Doc turned away from him, straightening his gold spotted brocade vest as he put the knife away and turned to Kate.

Retrieving his guns, he blandly told her, “I calculate that’s the end of this town.”

Kate smiled, thrilled by all he’d done. “I had a boy at the hotel check us out. There are horses outside…”

“That’s why you’re not wearin’ a bustle.”

His smile twitched at her chuckle as he tweaked the upward curl of his moustache. She stowed her gun and they both headed toward the door.

“My sweet soft Hungarian devil,” he mused, toying with his reclaimed cigarette as he picked up his stirrup cup and followed her.

Tipping his head back, having never lost his black hat, he finished off his whiskey. They paused at the roulette table and as he reached to drop the cup in, Kate was already opening the bag to catch it. He picked up the stacks of cash on the table and added them to the take, too.

Doc spoke to the frozen figures around them, his voice cultured and polite as if thanking them for a meal. “Well, good evenin’ then.” He tipped his hat and they walked out, leaving Bailey lying in a pool of blood on the table.

Out on the boardwalk, Kate was almost dancing with excitement as she led him to the horses, but then she paused and looked off in the direction of the hotel.

Doc caught her arm to stop her, turning her to face him. “Let’s not bother about the luggage.” The gleam in his eyes reminded her they had enough money to settle anywhere. He tossed his cigarette into the sandy street and pulled her into a passionate kiss. She clung to him, kissing him fiercely as he pushed her back toward the horse.

He broke the kiss with a satisfied smirk, set the leather bag down, and helped her up into the saddle – where she straddled it like a man. Hanging the bag from his saddle horn, he mounted up on the other and they galloped out of town into the gathering dusk.

After riding for hours, he called a halt to get his bearings. The land was empty and dark under the stars, but it never took Doc long to know where he was.

Kate watched him, exhilarated. “Where will we go?”

He hadn’t hesitated. “Dodge City, Kansas. Got a friend there – or someone who might be a friend. We’ll find out.”

Setting off on the four hundred mile trip on borrowed horses, Kate didn’t question him. It made no difference to her then where he went – she intended to follow. In that moment, she was ready to follow him straight into Hell.

~ ~ ~

When they arrived in Dodge City, Doc registered them at Deacon Cox’s Boarding House as Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Holliday. He seemed determined to make her happy. By June of the next year, they were settled and comfortable in the new town. She gave up her trade and he returned to his – hanging out his shingle once more. He put an add in the local paper offering his services as a dentist over the coming summer.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

“I remember that – he offered a refund for anyone who wasn’t satisfied with the service.” Wyatt’s smile faded. “It didn’t last long, did it?”

Kate looked wistful. “I wasn’t born for a quiet life, not then. I missed the excitement of the saloons and dance halls, and I’d never wanted to be any man’s wife, even for Doc. I told him I wanted to go back to it all, and we fought. It was terrible. I wasn’t sober, neither was he. We fought often, you know – but the first time, when you’ve been happy together, always seems the worst.”

An old knife of regret twisted in his guts. “I understand.”

“I’d dealt with respectable living as long as I could. It was strange about Doc. As much as he seemed to love the gambling dens, he was always drawn to his proper profession and tried to go back to it more than once. Often as not, I helped pull him away from it again, one way or another.” She sighed. “That ugly argument split us up for a time. He didn’t last long on the straight and narrow either, though – started dealing faro at the Long Branch Saloon.” Eyeing Wyatt closely, she added, “He said that was where you became his friend ‘in truth’.” Smiling, she added, “You know how he used to talk. Sometimes he talked right over my head.”

Nodding, Wyatt took another drink. “Mine too. He saved my life in Long Branch, plain and simple.”

“Tell me.” Kate topped off his drink. “Then I’ll tell you how we met again, in Prescott.”

******************************************  
July 1878: Dodge City, Kansas – Wyatt  
******************************************

Deacon Cox’s Boarding House had acquired new residents – a Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Holliday. Wyatt assumed Doc was fleeing trouble and seeing Kate with him bore out that theory. It was obvious in an instant she was no man’s wife; she looked like the very image of trouble.

The tall exotic brunette beauty walked into the Alhambra Saloon on Doc’s arm and sat beside him at Wyatt’s faro table. Clearly no stranger to saloons or the company of men, she appeared to be quite taken with her pale and dangerous companion and kept giving him whiskey as the night progressed. There was a story there that might be best left unknown. In any event, Wyatt never asked and Doc never told.

For Wyatt’s part, he was happy to see the old rip again and ignored the whispers of the discontented who wondered why their marshal was a friend to such lowlife. Yet Doc kept the law in Dodge City and began running a faro table himself in a back room of the Long Branch Saloon.

It had been a busy and potentially lethal summer for Wyatt. He stepped on toes as part of his job and some of the drunken gunmen wanted to step back. One shooter barely missed him as he watched Eddie Foy’s vaudeville act at the Comique Theatre and another man tried shoot him from a dark alley off First Avenue. That bullet whipped past his face.

Then real trouble showed up in the form of Ed Morrison, a man from Wichita whom Wyatt had humiliated. His companions included Tobe Driskill, a desperado, and fifty Texans intent on helping Ed to tree the town.

Wyatt had established a Deadline sign in the town to mark where citizens weren’t allowed to carry guns. Anyone carrying beyond that point was arrested with no questions asked. Ed and his new friends started by shooting the sign to pieces before they howled down Front Street shooting out shop windows.

They chose badly when they entered the Long Branch Saloon, vandalizing the place and harassing its customers.

Wyatt had found out too late what the real play was and ran into the saloon, straight into a score of bristling gun barrels. He was armed but if he reached for his guns, he’d be shot by over twenty men at once.

His anger was hotter than his fear, but there was nothing he could do. The man leading the mob had a personal grudge to settle and wouldn’t be satisfied with anything short of blood – all of it.

Ed Morrison sneered as he stepped forward. In a growling voice, he commanded, “Pray and jerk your gun! Your time has come, Earp!”

A thousand thoughts whirled in his head as Wyatt realized his life was over. Then he saw a door to one of the back rooms open behind Morrison. A voice, rough and cultured at once, rang out.

“No, friend, you draw – or throw your hands up!”

A revolver was pressed to Morrison’s temple, the nickel-plated .38 Colt Lightning that Doc wore in a shoulder holster under his left arm. Its ivory handled twin, a .45 Colt Peacemaker, sat untouched under his right arm. The rustlers had disturbed his card game, and he’d come out to find them threatening his friend.

“Any of you bastards pulls a gun and your leader here loses what’s left of his brains.”

The Texans didn’t hesitate – their firearms fell to the floor. Doc helped Wyatt get them all to the jailhouse, and then invited him back to the Long Branch for a drink.

After that incident, Wyatt had his response ready for all detractors. “If anyone questions my loyalty to Holliday, there’s my answer. The only way anyone could have appreciated the feelin’ I had for Doc after the Driskill-Morrison business would have been to have stood in my boots at the time Doc came through the Long Branch doorway.”

Doc and Kate left Dodge City soon after but headed in different directions. The rumor around town was that the two had quarreled again. There were other rumors of trouble, about men left dead in the gunman’s wake – but that was nothing new.

Wyatt didn’t see his friend again for two years.

~ ~ ~

Dodge City lost its dangerous edge after Wyatt cleaned up the outlaw element that had plagued it, but for him, it also lost its adventurous appeal.

In 1879, he left with Mattie, the woman he lived with as man and wife but had never married. They headed to Tombstone after receiving a letter from his brother Virgil. Wyatt was eager for the next rowdy frontier town and for the dream of living as a family again with his brothers. It was an old dream that might finally become reality. They would make their fortunes, and their futures, together.

Arriving at the train depot in Tucson, Arizona, he met his brothers Virgil and Morgan, with their wives, and got his first real news of Doc in a long time. Virgil had seen Doc in Prescott, winning at poker. Kate, his Hungarian shadow, had been once again in tow.

The Earps arrived in Tombstone on December 1, 1879, but Wyatt didn’t meet Doc again until the next summer.

********************************************************************  
Summer 1880: Prescott & Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Kate  
********************************************************************

It wasn’t hard to keep track of where Doc Holliday went or what he did when he got there. For the first, rumor and local newspapers would track his progress through the West. For the second, Kate knew him well enough to guess.

After their first violent quarrel in Dodge City, Doc had saddled his horse and ridden out of town in a furious mood. The papers placed him in Trinidad, Colorado, where a foolish young man known as ‘Kid Colton’ badgered Doc into a fight – presumably for no better reason than to make a reputation for himself. It ended as it always did; the twin Colts blazed, the opponent fell, and Doc found another town.

Saloon and sporting house talk said he ended up in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in the summer of 1879 he hung out his shingle for the last time. It was a short attempt.

Kate soon heard that her former paramour had acquired a saloon on Center Street, the Occidental, won in a faro game. Mere weeks later, he had to escape New Mexico after killing a local gunman named Mike Gordon – who had turned out to be too popular for Doc’s health. She did smile at the story that he had invited the man to start shooting whenever he felt like it, but it was Doc’s trio of bullets that lodged in Gordon’s stomach. He disappeared just ahead of a hanging mob.

Doc told her later, when they’d reunited, about his decision to head back to Dodge, and Wyatt: “It was the only safe place for me for a time, darlin’, but it seems the old son had tired of his cow town. They said he was headed for Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory. What could I do but follow?”

What indeed. Kate suspected there was more to it than the gambler had said. In later years, she could never pry him away from the Earps and it was a situation that started early in their tumultuous relationship.

She encountered rumors of Doc the moment she landed in Prescott but for once they were fresh tales – the man himself was still in town, taking a rest from his trip to the silver mining boomtown of Tombstone. The hotel clerk gossiped that he was winning at poker as always.

Kate soon discovered that Doc’s current streak made it worthwhile to creep back into his good graces. Not an easy task, as it turned out – but she was persistent.

There were Earps about in Prescott too, but Wyatt wasn’t one of them. Morgan came from Montana with his wife Louisa, and Virgil was present already, with Allie, his pretty and feisty wife. They intended to meet Wyatt in Tucson, and travel together from there. Apparently, they had also talked Doc into going with them. When they were ready to go, his streak was still going strong and he promised to follow them later.

Having planned to head for Tombstone herself, determined to open her own sporting house there, it seemed the perfect time to court the infamous Doc Holliday again. By guile or seduction, she intended to lure him back to her bed. Failing that, she’d ambush him in his.

~ ~ ~

Kate couldn’t afford a room at Mount Tritle, where she had heard Holliday was staying. Gossip told her that his quarters were the best, complete with a beautifully appointed sitting room. The porter wouldn’t let her into the doctor’s suite, however. Nonplussed, she headed over to the Gem Saloon and Gaming Parlor, sure Doc would be spending more time there anyway.

Done up fancy in her finest scarlet dress, without a bustle just in case it amused him, she entered the saloon. Doc was easy to find at the back of the poker tables. Smoothly avoiding the other men who noticed her, she bought a bottle of bourbon at the bar and carried a glass with it over to Doc’s table.

She wasn’t the only woman present and the men were too wrapped in their game to look around. The familiar silver stirrup cup waited at Doc’s left hand, half empty. The bottle beside him might have one shot left. She didn’t touch it, opening hers instead.

Doc was raising at odd times as usual, confusing his company of dusty traders. Kate knew him well and waited until she wouldn’t disrupt his game. Then, leaning forward to set her lips closer to his ear, she filled his cup.

“Surprise, Doc. Did you miss me?”

With his poker face on, it was hard to tell if he was surprised or not. She couldn’t even determine if he was still angry with her, but his manners never flagged, whatever his personal feelings.

“Evenin’, darlin’. Can’t talk just now.” Turning back to the others, he continued stunning and outraging them with his skill at cards.

“I’ll wait and keep the whiskey going, sugar. You were almost tapped.”

He gave her a look that was hard to read but answered, “I’m obliged.”

They both knew the alcohol soothed his cough. It was the reason he drank before breakfast, through the day, and most of the night. Without it, the coughing fits could render him unfit for company, to say the least.

Although she had certainly seen him drink enough to pass out, his tolerance was amazing. Most men wouldn’t have been able to function at all on half the bourbon Doc consumed. At times he drank two or three quarts a day, yet it actually seemed to lend him energy and focus.

Of course, he could pretend to be much further gone than he felt – that was just one of his many tricks. It often lured others into reckless behavior, with their cards and their guns. Over time, she had decided that when Doc seemed to be seriously incapacitated, it was his malady, not the drink, impairing him.

Just before the game ended, Kate made sure she was sitting next to Doc but out of his way. She was almost surprised when none of the traders finished up dead. It was after midnight: early by Doc’s standards.

“I believe you wanted to surprise me?” He asked her as he stood and headed for the bar with his empty cup dangling from a finger of his left hand. He’d come out over a thousand ahead and it might help her efforts if he was in a spirited mood.

“I still could if you felt like retiring.”

“Perhaps.” He was still cross, she could see that now. His mannerism was polite but tinged with a sour wariness.

“Come on, Doc. We’re right back where we started, aren’t we? If you wanted to be a dentist, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Dentistry is a precarious profession for one in my situation – quite fleetin’ if rumor has its way. Some choices are made for us, Kate.”

She smiled. He was relenting already, wasn’t he? “Let me make one for you now.”

Slipping her hand around his arm she glanced at the door and back at him, pleased to see the warmth of lust melt his stiff attitude. With any luck, few others had dared to take her place.

“Lead the way, then – I’m sure you already know where I’m stayin’.”

~ ~ ~

Entering his suite, she released his arm and moved through the sitting room to lean against the bedroom doorway.

He shut and locked the door. Without turning, he said, “Make yourself at home, darlin’. I’ll be there in a moment.”

She shed her clothing and slipped into his bed, amazed it had been so simple to get him here.

When he entered the room, he blew out the lamps, leaving them in darkness. She listened as he undressed in the dark. Was this a new shyness? He’d never been so secretive before.

Before she was aware of it, he pulled the covers back and pressed her beneath him. He seemed urgent and all the gentle play and lingering affection was gone. Kate didn’t concern herself about it. He’d been direct and all-business before, and they’d been apart and estranged.

She stroked his back as he moved over her, his skill with lovemaking as fine as ever. He was thinner and shortly dowsed with sweat, but it was as good as it had been in Dodge City.

He was quiet when he finished and fell still. As she began to brush through his hair with her fingers, he rolled away from her and sat up. A lamp on the nightstand flared to life.

“What is it, Doc?” His stare was indifferent and she felt a tightening in her stomach. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not a thing, but we’ve completed this business, haven’t we? What are you chargin’ these days?”

“What?” Her shock faded as a frown bloomed on her face.

“You were rather strident, when we parted, on the subject of your chosen profession. Am I to assume you’ve given it up? If not, we should settle the debt. You need to be on your way, I’m sure, and I believe I’d like to sleep in peace.”

It was a test, perhaps – or a touch of mild revenge. Anger was useless. She possessed a quick mind and a talent for sizing up a situation, and she knew this man well. Smoothing her frown at the thought, she settled deeper into the pillows and smiled up at him.

“I’m not working right now. You’re a treat, not a mark.” Reaching out, she stroked his pale stomach. “You’ve had your dig. Can’t we be friends again? I’ll take care of you, you know you like having me around.”

He took a breath to answer and was instantly doubled over by a coughing fit. He turned his face away from her quickly and groped for a handkerchief and his flask.

Kate wasted no time. She rose and fetched the flask, handed it to him, and watched him take a long pull. It quieted the cough, but he abruptly appeared weaker, in pain.

Sitting beside him, she gave him his handkerchief. “I’m sorry, sugar – for everything. Now let me stay and watch out for you. We’re good for each other, you and me.”

He had allowed her to stay and took her at her word, though it had been a while before he trusted her again or relaxed enough to be the lover she had missed more than she cared to admit.

She stopped spending time with other men and tended to Doc, enjoying his wit as well as his reflective silence and indulging herself in his bed as often as she could.

It was a challenge to sleep soundly at times and she was often woken by his coughing, but she cared for him without a fuss, never allowing pity to enter her eyes or her voice … and they fell into old routines with relative ease.

~ ~ ~

In the summer of 1880, Kate and her man finally headed out for Tombstone with $40,000 hidden in Doc’s money belt. It was reason enough to be a couple again, but she wasn’t going to play wife. She told him her plans to buy a large tent and become the boomtown’s first official madam. Perhaps mollified by her resumed attentions, Doc hadn’t protested.

When they arrived, Kate established her business after rounding up several likely girls. The tent was wedged between a funeral parlor and the Soma Winery on the North side of Allen Street, at Sixth Street, but she lived with Doc in a boarding house called Mrs. Fly’s. Doc set them up in style in the most expensive room available, with a balcony overlooking the street, a view he always insisted on.

Kate plied her trade as Doc began his rounds of the gambling dens and life was good again for a time. That was before the Cowboys clashed with the Earps. Many times, Kate wished Doc would keep out of their affairs, but he was more loyal to Wyatt than to her – that had never changed.

It had been a frightening and uncertain time, but though she sometimes wished it could have been different, she had to admit that her life had never been such an exciting daily thrill.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

“Tombstone.” Wyatt fell silent. Glancing at Kate quickly once, he looked away again. “I try not to think about it … but it feels like yesterday.”

Kate touched his shoulder. “I know. I can still smell the smoke of Doc’s cigarettes in my room sometimes. It’s hard.”

He watched her without answering. She had paused often in her tale of their Prescott days, and he knew she had left a lot of things unsaid. He didn’t press her for secrets or private exchanges.

‘The incident at Tombstone’, as it was so often called in saloons and the newspapers, pressed in on him, yet not all of their times there had been a horror.

A flashing picture of his younger brother Morgan filled his thoughts and he winced. Morgan smiling, playing pool – Morgan striding down a street at his side, headed for a tragedy that would later cost him his life.

Shaking his head, he focused on the woman beside him. They both drank again and Kate refilled her cup and his glass. Memories, private and shared, haunted them.

**********************************************************  
Summer 1880: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
**********************************************************

Barely a resident of Tombstone, he had challenged a bully named Johnny Tyler and taken from him a quarter-interest in the faro game at the Oriental Saloon. It had been all too easy and he’d done it without wearing a gun.

Rejoining Virgil and Morgan on the street, he told them the news. He hadn’t seen Tyler advancing with the sawed-off shotgun, until a familiar and very welcome voice called out to the angry tough.

“Why Johnny Tyler, you madcap! Where are you going with that shotgun?”

He stopped short twenty feet away from them and spun around to see Doc Holliday standing in a doorway, smiling. Tyler froze. “Doc? I didn’t know you were in town.”

Wyatt spotted Doc and walked up, his brothers in tow. As Doc met them in the street, a rare smile spread across Wyatt’s normally dour face. “Well, well. How the hell are you?”

“Wyatt, I am rolling.”

Doc’s reply had been given with a sly smile and a slight bow. A broad smile stretched over Wyatt’s face.

He and his brothers had started having trouble with the cattle rustler group of Texas outlaws called the Cowboys almost as soon as they arrived. Virgil muttered that adding Doc Holliday to the mix was pouring whiskey on a blaze, but Wyatt was pleased to see him. There was no better man to have on their side.

Tyler burst out, startled, “Wyatt? Wyatt Earp?”

The men smiled briefly at him, amused, and then Doc shook hands with the brothers. “Morgan,” he greeted the younger. “Virgil.”

“Hello, Doc,” Virgil responded, guarded but friendly.

“What are you up to?” the gambler asked.

“Goin’ into business for ourselves, Doc.” Morgan replied. “Wyatt just got us a faro game.”

“Since when is faro a business?”

Wyatt faced him as he puffed on his cigar, delighted to be in his company again. “Didn’t you always say gambling’s an honest trade?”

“No, I said poker’s an honest trade. Only suckers buck the tiger. The odds are all with the house.”

“Depends how you look at it,” Wyatt answered. “I mean it’s not like anybody’s holdin’ a gun to their heads, is it?”

Doc grinned. “That’s what I love about Wyatt. He can talk himself into anything.” He reached out and shook Wyatt’s hand. They laughed, and then Doc abruptly noticed Tyler again, who had begun to tremble. “Oh Johnny, I apologize – I forgot you were there. You may go now.”

Wyatt spoke up. “Just leave that shotgun.” Tyler tried to offer it to him. “Leave it.”

He laid the gun at Wyatt’s feet. “Thank you.”

Tyler turned, relieved, and walked away as John Behan, the county sheriff, approached affably. Doc sniffed in disdain, amusing Wyatt.

“Sheriff Behan, have you met Doc Holliday?”

Under his breath, Doc muttered, “Piss on you, Wyatt.”

Behan was impressed and held out his hand. “Mr. Holliday.”

Doc hid his distaste well and used his breeding to advantage. “Forgive me if I don’t shake hands.”

Behan nodded with a smile and turned to Wyatt. “So how’s Tombstone treating you?”

“Fine, fine. But I was thinkin’, you know what this town really needs is a race track.”

“Really.” Behan fiddled with his walking stick as he talked. “That’s not a bad idea – send a signal we’re growing up.”

Doc weighed in then. “Way ahead of yourselves, aren’t you, boys? This is just another mining camp.”

Behan, a regular civic booster, was unfazed. “Have you seen how everyone dresses? Awfully Toney for a mining camp. No sir, the die is cast, we’re growing, be as big as San Francisco in a few years, and just as sophisticated.”

Doc’s sarcasm dripped. “I can hardly wait.”

In the next moment, a bullet whizzed past Behan’s head and they all ducked. More shots were fired as a man holding a bloody hand to his throat reeled out the door of the nearby Crystal Palace, his gun firing wildly before he pitched face first onto the sidewalk, dead.

Two more men appeared immediately: a staggering drunk with a bullet hole in his shoulder, and a leathery plainsman with his gun at the ready.

A crowd formed as the drunk raised his pistol, bellowing, “You son of a bitch!”

Then a third man appeared, long-haired and hawk-nosed. He held his pistol at the ready, keeping bystanders at bay. “Easy, gents,” he said. “Private affair.”

The drunk raised his gun nearly level. The plainsman warned him, “Don’t raise that arm!” When the drunk did just that, firing past his head, he shot him dead.

Unable to resist, Doc turned to Behan and remarked, “Very cosmopolitan.”

Wyatt stared at the shooters. “I know him. That’s Creek Johnson.”

Then the long-haired man spotted Wyatt and the others a moment after Johnson did. “Wyatt? Doc?”

Doc lifted a hand in greeting.

Wyatt knew Texas Jack Vermillion as well. “Jack,” he responded.

Vermillion headed over first. “What do you say, old friend?”

Wyatt spoke as they joined them. “What the hell was that all about, Creek?”

“He crawfished a bet and called me a liar.”

Doc, playing host, turned to Behan to introduce the men, taking pains to sound as civilized as possible with a smirk tugging at his lips. “Sheriff, may I present a pair of fellow sophisticates, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion.” Noting that Johnson was bleeding, he added, “Watch your ear, Creek.”

Johnson touched it, saw the blood, and gave a silent start. Marshal Fred White arrived, drawn by the shooting. Looking weary, he faced Johnson and Vermillion.

“‘Fraid I’ll have to have those guns.”

“It was a fair fight, we were legal,” Johnson protested.

“Sorry, boys,” White answered, “I gotta take you before Judge Spicer.”

Johnson sighed as they began to hand over their guns. “Law and order every time, that’s us.”

A large and fancy stagecoach had arrived and stopped in the street at the Grand Hotel. The others turned to look as a handsome and gallant man stepped out and handed down and stunning brunette.

Virgil looked at the two dead men lying in the street and shook his head. “What kind of town is this?”

Staring at the woman, Morgan remarked, “Nice scenery.”

His comment made Wyatt turn to look. She spotted him instantly and the stare they shared seemed to transcend time and place.

Doc, amused at Wyatt’s blatant stare, couldn’t resist commenting. “Well … an enchanted moment.”

And it was, a moment that changed his life, but Wyatt had other problems. Mattie’s dependency on laudanum had been driving a rift between them already and the arrival of Josephine Marcus, with that look in her eye, was bound to complicate matters.

Behan broke the spell. “That must be the theatrical troupe. There’s a show tonight at the Bird Cage Theatre.”

Creek Johnson spoke up, “Hey, Wyatt, you goin’ to the show? Maybe we’ll see you there.” He turned to the marshal. “Won’t we...”

Marshal White answered grudgingly, “Yeah, probably.” He led them off.

Wyatt and the actress held each other’s gaze as she spoke to her handsome companion and smiled across the wide street at him.

The beautiful young actress had set her sights on Wyatt immediately, but he, responding to Doc’s instant taunting, began a campaign to ignore her. It was less than successful, as he’d fallen in love with her the moment he saw her. Doc, of course, had known it. It had been a whirlwind evening, starting at the Bird Cage Theatre.

~ ~ ~

Virgil, Morgan, and their wives sat in their box seats on the second floor. Wyatt led Mattie to the next balcony over. Doc entered with Kate on his arm just after them.

“Kate, you know the Earps.”

Wyatt had shaken her hand rather than kissing it – he knew she preferred to be treated as an equal by men.

They sat as Mayor John Clum and his wife approached with Marshal White, who made introductions, and then the mayor began the predicted spiel. “Your reputation precedes you. I wonder –”

“Not a prayer. Nice meetin’ you.” Wyatt turned away to face the stage below them.

The orchestra tuned up and the crowd’s excitement rose. Wyatt took the time to study a collection of Cowboys on the first floor. The outlaws had conquered the front rows of chairs, pitching other citizens out of them.

Billy Grounds, Zwing Hunt, Billy Claiborne, Wes Fuller, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton, the youngest and the wild one, made up a regular rabble. Florentino, half-Mexican, might hate Mexicans more than the rest. Wyatt recognized the breeds, Hank Swilling, and Pony Deal. Rounding out the mix of ruffians were Johnny Barnes and Frank Stillwell.

Behan’s Deputy, Billy Breakenridge, was just entering, heading through the rest to the leaders. He was a slight young man, often the butt of the others’ jokes. Wyatt tracked him to the big boys: Brocius and Ringo.

Curly Bill Brocius had led the Cowboys since Old Man Clanton was killed by Mexicans, according to Marshal Fred White. The elder Clanton son, Ike, had apparently not won the respect of the others fast enough to claim the top spot.

Out of all of them, it was Johnny Ringo who inspired real concern.  He was rumored to be the best gun alive. He was a quiet and nervy man, perhaps a little mad. He only spoke to Brocius.

The Deputy was saved from Cowboy ridicule and catcalls of ‘sister-boy’ by Curly Bill and sat on his other side, away from Ringo, just as the music started and the house lights dimmed.

The audience hushed, but the rabble didn’t stay quiet for long. The first thing the acting troupe learned was that they’d better be good – or the Cowboys might take the entertainment into their own hands – with their guns.

The lead actor, a handsome, slightly raffish man named Romulus Fabian, came out early after a juggler, Professor Gillman, was shot at onstage and frightened away.

Loud enough to be heard by all, Curly Bill called out in a mocking drawl, “Prettiest man I ever saw.”

This was the companion of the actress he’d been distracted by all afternoon on one look. A classical tragedian, Fabian stood bravely in his tights and Shakespearean costume, having cast away his cloak dramatically, and recited the Saint Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V. He barely reacted to another shot fired at his scenery: a plaster column. Brushing the dust from his sleeve, he continued and won over the crowd instantly with his bravery if not his words.

“If we are marked to die, we are enow to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer me, the greater the share of honor…”

As he finished to wild applause and cheering, and more gunshots – firing at the ceiling now – Fabian bowed with elaborate modesty. The curtain fell. Another card was placed out to announce the next entertainment: ‘Faust – or the Devil’s Bargain’, and the orchestra whirled into ‘Danse Macabre’ by Saint-Saens.

The rising curtain revealed a wild painted backdrop, all black and red, covered with weird, Beardsley-esque designs and images of death and damnation. A light came up, revealing an ancient white-bearded scholar sitting alone with his books.

Then a masked Satan danced across the stage, slender and lissome in paned black doublet and breeches and black hose, tempting the old man with images of wealth and youth in the form of a shimmering blonde ballerina. The old man succumbed, signing Satan’s contract.

The audience watched in rapt attention, especially the Cowboys, who had to comment on things anyway. Wyatt was grateful he couldn’t hear them.

Across the table, Doc leaned in close to the smiling Kate. “Is your soul for sale, dear?”

On the stage, the smug Satan made a flourish. A flash-pad explosion transformed the old scholar into a young student. The ballerina flitted by. The student offered her gold and they danced, swirling about the stage in a mad waltz with Satan hovering behind them, mirroring their every move like a puppet master. Finally, having gotten all his gold, the Ballerina drifted away leaving the young student alone, lost in bitterness as he changed back into the old scholar sitting with his books. Satan appeared over him, exultant and triumphant, ready to collect the debt. Actors dressed as demons led the scholar away into Hell. Satan wrapped his arms around his chest smugly and walked after them with mincing gloat of steps as the curtain fell with a final crashing chord.

Thunderous cheering and applause broke through the theatre. The curtain rose again and the performers came out for bows, all except Satan.

Doc seemed amused. “Very instructive.”

Wyatt scanned his program. “But who was the Devil?”

As he looked up at another round of applause, Satan had bounded out, removing the mask. It was Josephine Marcus. She spotted Wyatt’s box and smiled at him, a warm invitation in her dark eyes.

Wyatt was stunned. “Well, I’ll be damned…”

Doc raised an eyebrow and leaned in to speak to Wyatt in an undertone. “You may indeed. If you get lucky.”

Mattie hadn’t missed the exchange, and Wyatt cursed Doc’s reckless ways under his breath.

He arrived at the Oriental with Morgan for the night’s work at the faro table where they were soon joined by Doc and Kate.

The saloon was packed, full of men in button shoes and saloon girls in patent leather pumps. Cowhands and drovers wore stack-heeled boots with jingling silver spurs. The crowd wore slouch hats, pork-pies, derbys, and wide-brim sombreros. Every one of this diverse crowd was focused on one thing: the redistribution of other people’s money.

Wyatt sat against the wall behind the faro layout as the night got off to a good start. Doc sat at his side and Morgan stood behind Wyatt’s right shoulder, on lookout. As high rollers came and went, the Earps got richer. One overdressed gambler lost the deeds to his silver mines.

At a break in the game, Wyatt studied the deeds as his brother and friend looked on. Kate sat on Doc’s other side, blowing smoke rings contentedly.

“So now we’re in the minin’ business,” Wyatt commented. “Turnin’ into regular tycoons. Gonna call this one the Mattie Blaylock. Mattie’ll get a kick out of that, it’s her maiden name.”

Doc smirked. “And what a maiden, pure as the driven snow, I’m sure.”

Morgan was shocked. “Hey Doc! Come on now.”

Wyatt wasn’t upset or surprised. “Just his style, Morg. Doesn’t mean anythin’. Kate, would you watch the table?”

When she nodded, the men got up and headed to the bar, but Doc wasn’t ready to let the subject drop. “So tell me, Wyatt, I’m curious. Do you actually consider yourself a married man? Forsakin’ all others?”

“Well yeah, pretty much. I mean I was no angel when we met and neither was she. People can change Doc. I mean sooner or later you gotta grow up.”

“I see. And what would you do if she walked in here?”

“She?”

“You know damn well who I mean.” Doc twirled a hand at him as if drawing her figure in the air. “That dusky-hued lady Satan.”

“I don’t know. Probably ignore her.”

“Ignore her?”

“I’d ignore her. People can change, Doc.”

“I’ll remember you said that.” Doc struck his glass against Wyatt’s cup and walked away.

“What?” Wyatt asked, as Morgan grinned. Then he saw what Doc and his brother had already noticed. Josephine Marcus had just walked in with the other actors and as the crowd noticed them, applause broke out. She was a vision in a silver satin and lace gown. Wyatt’s heart sank. “Oh, hell.”

Josephine crossed the barroom floor by dancing a few steps with several smiling men, always handing herself off to the next with a laugh. Spotting Wyatt, she stopped in front of him, her gloved hands out to offer to dance with him, too. Her curtsey displayed her cleavage, barely more modest than one of the saloon girls.

Aware of Doc’s gaze, Wyatt looked away, as if ignoring her. She looked stunned, but Behan quickly stepped up to her, offering her a drink and an escape from the awkward moment. They moved toward the bar.

Wyatt turned to the waiting Doc. “Satisfied?”

“I stand corrected, Wyatt. You’re an oak.”

They returned to the faro table as Mr. Fabian entered to enthusiastic applause. Dressed stunningly like Lord Byron, he bowed, accepting the invitation of Deputy Breakenridge to sit at his table, near the faro game. Breakenridge fetched champagne for him and sat beside him eagerly.

“Oh, thank you. You’re very kind,” Fabian said, his words enunciated perfectly.

“Mr. Fabian, I’ve got to tell you,” Breakenridge gushed, “that’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard, what you did. What was that?”

“Shakespeare, Henry V. Henry’s all right but he’s no match for the Melancholy Dane.” Seeing the young man’s confusion, he explained. “Hamlet, dear friend, the supreme role of any actor worth his salt.”

Doc leaned in, pointing to Wyatt. “Here’s a man you should meet, Mr. Fabian. Excellent character study for you, the real-life actual Melancholy Dane.”

Fabian smiled genially. “Indeed, sir? How so?”

Delighted, Doc elaborated. “Well he hems, he haws, he talks out both sides of his mouth – but all on a very high plane, just like Hamlet.”

Wyatt frowned. “Gettin’ drunk, Doc.”

Unconcerned, Doc chuckled.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

Kate was quiet beside him. Wyatt took another drink and tried not to dwell on Josie. She was in Denver, at a playhouse – or so local rumor claimed. He didn’t want to think of her yet – though Doc had told him to seek her out and claim her, it seemed wrong to plan for the future while Doc was laid out for burial.

The feud with the Cowboys, the driving force of their lives that long ago summer and autumn, was too muddled and agonizing a memory, too. Virgil had been crippled by it and Morgan had been murdered by the outlaws, dying in Wyatt’s arms.

He bowed his head, staring into his glass. _Think of Doc. Remember him as he was._

The gaunt and elegant dentist had had a languid, almost feline grace. Full of Southern refinement, he had an unerring style and such aplomb that he could make his constant tubercular cough sound as if he was merely clearing his throat.

Doc had always dressed richly and looked like a dandy, even when he was drunk and bathed in sweat, but whiskey never took away his mind or his wit: it only sharpened his temper. Or sometimes, and most thought this was worse, it would bring out a cold and calculating desire for blood in the man. His talent at graciously insulting his target into a rage was legendary. In those moments, Wyatt had never been sure if it was his opponent’s death or his own that Doc was eager to achieve.

In spite of that, those times were also some of Wyatt’s favorite memories and most often the moments when Doc could help him forget his nagging conscience and make him laugh.

A smile tugged at his lips abruptly as he remembered Doc trading Latin phrases that night with the psychotic Cowboy second, Johnny Ringo. Doc had never told him what they’d said to each other. Maybe he could ask Father Feeney? If it was safe to ask a priest what two crazed gunfighters had said to egg each other on. The words, like the night itself, were etched in his memory. His hand gripped his glass and his eyes closed.

“What is it?” Kate whispered.

“Do you remember the night Doc and Ringo had an argument in Latin?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did he ever tell you what they said?”

“Never. Doc didn’t explain himself when he talked over your head.”

Wyatt nodded. Most of the time, he could understand the philosophical bents pursued by Doc’s gifted mind. He suspected it could be another reason the doctor liked having him around. Yet when he slipped into Latin, he left his friend behind.

*********************************************************  
Summer 1880: Tombstone, Arizona Territory - Wyatt  
*********************************************************

Wyatt sat at his faro table and appeased the Cowboy Curly Bill with a $500 win and the news that Wyatt was retired from law enforcement. Their leader’s satisfaction backed up Ike Clanton and the others a bit.

Then Johnny Ringo had noticed the thin, well-dressed man standing beside Wyatt’s chair. He swayed slightly as he held his engraved silver stirrup cup, his face shining with sweat. Pale skin and tired reddened eyes marked him as consumptive, but the guns he wore and how he wore them were enough to prove his identity to any other outlaw.

Ringo stepped up to the edge of the faro table beside Curly Bill. His voice was a lazy sneer. “You must be Doc Holliday.”

Doc inspected the level of whiskey in his cup. “That’s the rumor.”

The sneer turned sarcastic. “You retired, too?”

Doc looked up with an intense gleam in his gray-blue eyes. If this was a fresh challenger, he was eager to play. “Not me. I’m in my prime.”

“Yeah, you look it.”

“You must be Ringo.” He turned to Kate who stood beside him, pouring more liquor into a small brandy glass. “Look, darlin’, Johnny Ringo. The deadliest pistoleer since Wild Bill, they say. What do you think, darlin’? Should I hate him?”

“You don’t even know him,” she replied with a cultured smile.

“That’s true, but there’s just somethin’ about him, something around the eyes. I don’t know, he reminds me of … me. No. I’m sure of it,” he added, leaning briefly to look at Wyatt. “I hate him.”

They all knew that was enough for some men to commence shooting. Wyatt held up his hand to Ringo. “He’s drunk.”

Doc took a sip of his whiskey and quietly replied, “In vino veritas.”

Ringo was the only man in the Oriental who understood Doc’s words and when he responded in kind, the saloon went silent around them.

“Age quod agis.” The challenge was as obvious as the language was a mystery.

Doc’s eyes gained that eager gleam. “Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego.”

Ringo reached down and patted the six-shooter on his right hip. “Iuventus stultorum magister.”

A wide delighted and wicked smile spread over the doctor’s thin lips. “In pace requiescat.”

Fred White, the old town marshal, stepped up, trying to settle the men down. “Come on, boys. We don’t want any trouble here, not in any language.”

Doc switched back to English, speaking to Kate. “That’s Latin, darlin’. Evidently Mr. Ringo’s an educated man. Now I really hate him.”

Ringo held Doc’s gaze and instantly whipped out his .45. Everyone flinched, except for Doc.

“Watch it, Johnny,” Curly Bill warned, “I hear he’s real fast.”

The Cowboy aimed the gun for a moment, and then began to perform a dazzling series of twirls and tricks, his nickel-plated pistol flashing like a blaze of silver fire. He went though several intricate passes that must have taken a while to practice and perfect, before finally slapping it back into his holster with a flourish.

The astonished crowd had gone from fear to delight at the display of skill. Their cheers and hoots sounded over spontaneous applause.

Doc had studied every move the gunman made intently. The Cowboys, Curly Bill, Ike, and others, stared at Doc as Ringo did, the challenge still on. Wyatt and Morgan watched them. Wyatt had reached under the table. His fingers found the shotgun he’d had mounted there, and he swiveled it to aim at the body of Ringo.

His sense of insulting fun winning over, Doc finished his drink, hooked a finger through the handle of his silver cup, and then launched into an exact duplication of Ringo’s routine.

The mockery of using the cup cracked smiles on the Earps and Curly Bill, as the room burst into laughter. Doc shrugged as he pretended to holster his cup at his hip, next to his .45.

Curly Bill started to lead his men away, a chuckle on his lips. He threw his winnings into the air extravagantly, announcing, “Drinks are on me!”

Ringo let a strange little hint of a smile cross his face before he followed the others.

**************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

“Doc tried to find you the next day,” Kate told him. “Your wife, Mattie, said you’d gone out riding. We didn’t find you until we all arrived at the Oriental, the night they killed the town marshal.”

Memories blinded him as longing and loneliness pulled painfully in his chest. Josie had taken up with Behan but still managed to shoot him looks and smiles whenever they crossed paths in town. He’d gone riding to avoid her, only to find that she had done the same. Her taunt about running the horses had led to his stallion chasing her mare on a thrilling and risky run through woods and down hills, jumping over trees. He’d never seen the like.

They had talked, she had asked if he was happy and he had assured her she was a lady – and somehow Doc’s teasing about him being an oak of marital fortitude had faded away in Josie’s arms, in her warmth.

The memory of that comfort broke under the guilt of the fight he’d had with his wife after finding her stash of empty laudanum bottles. She had confronted him about Josephine after seeing how they looked at each other. When he insisted he could make it right, Mattie had shocked him – demanding that they go to Josephine and tell her she meant nothing, in front of Mattie. He had frozen as his blood ran cold and she had seen it in his eyes – that he couldn’t … wouldn’t, do it.

He had lost her in that moment and he hadn’t even been sure at the time how to feel about the loss. Like a ghost of a life he no longer wanted, she had remained, lurking in the shadows of their home or clinging to his brothers’ wives as a way to remain sane. He had destroyed her through silence and coldness, yet all he felt was some intangible failure.

Josephine had burned through all the pain and creeping numbness in his soul that had walled his wife out, built by the many horrors he had lived through. Yet she had remained out of his reach merely because he was afraid of her fire, of the freedom she represented from the confines of the structured life he’d always lived.

Lost on two fronts, he slowly felt the soft gaze of his companion and startled, looking up at Kate in confusion.

With a slight but knowing smile, she didn’t ask him about it. Pouring whiskey for him, she said, “Doc wasn’t well that day but he wouldn’t rest. Sometimes he was … driven, to do what he did. I would go with him to share that life but also to watch over him. You know, you did it too.”

Wyatt nodded, grateful to escape the tangled mess inside him. “As much as he’d let me.”

“The marshal, what was his name?”

“Fred White.” He drank. “That was the beginning of the end.”

“I didn’t want it to end.”

“Me, neither. Sooner or later, those Cowboys were gonna start somethin’. I knew it. All I could do was try to hold it off, keep my family out of it.”

He had failed, she knew that. He wondered if she could see the ghosts in his eyes.

*********************************************************  
Summer 1880: Tombstone, Arizona Territory - Wyatt  
*********************************************************

The night after the day spent with Josie, most of the Cowboys had left the Oriental with only a few still drinking at the bar. Doc sat at the piano. He was almost too drunk to remain on the bench but managed to play Chopin flawlessly.

Kate was perched on the other end of the bench, leaning back against the doctor. She might have been as drunk as he was and perhaps they were holding each other up as he played. She swayed slightly against him to the music, her head touching his.

Wyatt remained at the faro table but tried to split his attention and keep an eye on his friend. That eye sharpened when Cowboy Billy Clanton went reeling over to the piano, with two of his friends looking on and snickering. They’d been grousing about Kate’s choice of men, no doubt jealous of her attentions. She ran a tent full of girls but her affections and favors were for Doc only.

In a loud and gratingly drunk voice, Billy asked, “Hey, is that ‘Old Dog Tray’? Sounds like ‘Old Dog Tray’ to me.”

“Pardon?” Doc responded, his voice slurred. It seemed to be an effort to look up at the Cowboy.

“You know, Stephen Foster. ‘Oh, Susanna’, ‘Camptown Races’ – Stephen-stinkin’-Foster!”

“Yes, well, this happens to be a Nocturne.”

“A which?”

“You know, Frederic-fucking-Chopin.” Confounding the outlaw with that, Doc played on as Kate laughed.

They had all been interrupted by a commotion out on Allen Street – Curly Bill on opium, shooting up the street, the buildings, even the full moon. Behan had argued with the Mayor that it was a town matter, not county – the coward was willing to send old Fred White out there to face down a madman. They all watched as White walked out.

Wyatt put his cards down and looked over at Doc. “Maybe I ought to go out there.”

“You will or you won’t,” Doc muttered, slurring the words. “Don’t look to me. I’m goin’ to sleep.” He laid his head down on the piano keys and passed out.

Wyatt frowned for a moment. Finally he stood, turning to Morgan. “Go wake up Virgil.” As his brother left, Wyatt faced the bartender, Milt Joyce. “Hey Milt, lend me a sidearm, will you?”

Before Wyatt reached the street, another shot rang out and Marshal White fell at Curly Bill’s feet.

 

 

***********************************************************  
**Author’s Note:** Here’s the translation of the Latin duel:

Doc: In wine there is truth.  
Ringo: Do what you do.  
Doc: Let Apella the Jew believe, not I.  
Ringo: Youth is the teacher of fools.  
Doc: May he rest in peace.

Thanks for reading! - AnonGrimm (@MET_Fic)  
***********************************************************


	2. Act Two

*********************************************************  
Summer 1880: Tombstone, Arizona Territory - Wyatt  
*********************************************************

Wyatt rushed out and struck Curly Bill to the ground with the butt of his borrowed gun. Almost before he landed, they were surrounded by outraged miners and outlaws demanding he turn their leader loose.

Ike snarled, “Swear to God, law dog, step aside or we’ll tear you apart.”

It had been a dicey, unnerving incident. He had the overeager Ike Clanton pinned, the point of his gun pressed against his forehead when the man had advanced on him. He held Curly Bill tightly by his shirt, insisting the man stand trial for the murder. Cowboys ringed them, inching closer. Beyond them were the miners and other citizens screaming for Curly Bill to swing. Ike’s brother Billy was drunk enough to get wooly – and kept stepping nearer to Wyatt.

Threatening Ike, Wyatt spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. “You die first, get it? The others might get me in a rush but not before I turn your head into a canoe. You understand me?”

Ike stood stock still. Billy stepped forward, undaunted. “He’s bluffin’! Let’s rush him!”

“No, he ain’t bluffin’,” Ike whimpered.

“You’re not as stupid as you look, Ike,” Wyatt responded. “Now tell them to get back.”

“Get back, go on…” When Billy took another step, Ike cried out, “Billy! He’ll kill me.”

All the men on the street tensed. Then Doc’s voice rang out behind Billy, calming Wyatt’s fears. “And you – music lover – you’re next.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Doc stood on the walkway, still swaying, and drunk as a lord. His stirrup cup in his right hand, he had his .38 in his left – trained on Billy.

Billy sneered as he turned to face Doc. “Drunk piano player. You’re so drunk, you can’t hit nothin’. In fact,” he drew a long buck knife, “you’re probably seein’ double.”

With the stirrup cup still dangling from one finger, Doc pulled out his .45 and aimed it at Billy, too. “I have two guns – one for each of ya.”

Billy paused, afraid – yet it was the abrupt arrival of Virgil and Morgan, bulling through the crowd and bearing shotguns, that quelled the mounting violence.

Wyatt lowered his pistol, heaving a sigh of relief as the Cowboys moved off. He pulled the still-groggy Curly Bill to his feet and hauled him, reeling, toward the jail.

Before he turned away, he met Doc’s eyes, amazed at the poise of the man. He was the only one feeling disappointment at the peaceful outcome, but he followed with his brothers as Wyatt took Curly Bill to the jail.

Nothing came of it, of course – after everything had calmed down and the law had done nothing about Curly Bill’s murder of Marshal Fred White, Wyatt had washed his hands of the whole mess. He tried to get his brothers to drop it too, yet events in the dangerous frontier town had stacked up and gotten to Virgil. Before Wyatt could knock sense into them both, his elder brother was the new town Marshal and his younger brother was his deputy.

Their new edict of no guns carried in the town could be a blessing or a curse, but Wyatt was sure it would end up the latter before they were done. Even so, they had managed all right through the rest of that summer.

**************************************************************  
October 25, 1881: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

The moment he entered the Oriental, Wyatt stopped at the sight of Josephine Marcus in a white gown singing by the piano. He slowly took his hat off out of respect as she smiled at him while she sang about lovers in a valley – as they had been, that once.

Swooping in like a vulture, Behan appeared at his shoulder to ask what he thought of the singer. It was practically a taunt. Wyatt brushed it off.

“Nice voice.”

Morgan stepped up to him the moment Behan slipped off. “Wyatt! Doc won’t quit, he’s been at it for thirty-six hours straight. Clanton and the McLaury brothers came in about an hour ago.”

Wyatt’s eyes had already swept the scene. Doc, looking dreadful with dark circles under his eyes, sat at the corner table playing poker with Ike Clanton and both McLaurys. Virgil was leaning on the bar nearby, watching over the game.

Morgan added, “I tried to get him to go to bed, but he just won’t let go.”

“I know – and nobody can make him.” They headed over to Doc’s table, and Wyatt stood next to his friend.

Doc gave him a bright, if sluggish, smile and spoke drunkenly, “Wyatt! Just in time. Pull up a chair.” He had lifted his head slowly to acknowledge him. Wyatt had never seen him so weak.

“Doc. Been hittin’ it awful hard, haven’t you?”

“Nonsense, I have not yet begun to defile myself.” His pale and sweating fingers held the cards steadily.

Ike Clanton was drunk, too. Doc was getting belligerent and another volatile situation unfolded.

Wyatt touched Doc’s shoulder lightly and whispered to him, trying to persuade him to give it up and go to bed. Doc was less than agreeable, though his edged charm never failed.

“I won’t be pawed at, thank you very much.”

He removed his hand. Seeing no other way to handle it, Wyatt settled for guard duty. He sat between Ike and the dentist and set out his cash to join the game. Morgan reclaimed his seat beside Kate, where he had already been trying to watch over them.

Kate was smiling at their exchange. “That’s right. Doc can go all day and all night and then some. That’s my loving man.” She didn’t notice Ike look up with jealousy at that. Kate put her arm around Doc’s shoulders and grinned as she poured more whiskey into his stirrup cup. “Have another one, my loving man.”

A carnal look passed between Doc and his woman, igniting Ike’s jealousy into frustrated anger.

“Hey,” Ike interjected, “lovin’ man – you been called.”

Wyatt shifted uneasily in his seat. The hand was down to Doc and Ike, and the pot was huge. Doc took a drink and showed his cards. It was no surprise to his friends that it was a win.

“Oops,” Doc remarked, clowning with a smirk as he began to chuckle.

Ike tossed the last of his drink down his throat as if for courage. When Doc began to take the money, he grabbed his hand. “That’s twelve hands in a row, Holliday, you son of a bitch, nobody’s that lucky.”

The Earps stiffened as an intensely focused expression came over Doc’s pale face. It gave him the appearance of a snake ready to strike. He spoke louder than necessary, a challenge riding his words.

“Why Ike, whatever do you mean?”

Doc’s eager welcome of the insult Ike implied made Wyatt wince. The threat was obvious to Ike, too; he removed his hand and sat back, afraid of Doc but still angry.

Virgil spoke a low warning neither man might heed. “Take it easy, boys.”

Doc grinned as he raked in the pot. “Maybe poker’s just not your game, Ike. I know, let’s have a spelling contest!”

Ike stood in a drunken rage. “How about I just wring your scrawny neck!”

He lunged, reaching in front of Wyatt, but Wyatt shoved him back as Doc burst out laughing.

Virgil came forward and grabbed Ike out of Wyatt’s shove, moving between him and the table. “That’s enough, Ike.”

“You takin’ his part? Huh? I’m the one got cheated. Damn pimps, you’re all in it together.”

“Nobody’s in anything, Ike, you’re drunk. Go on home and sleep it off.” Virgil stood between him and the others and put his hands on Ike’s shoulders to turn him toward the door.

“Get your damn hands off me! Don’t you ever put your hands on me, see. Don’t you ever try to man-handle a Cowboy, ‘cause we’ll cut your damn pimp’s heart out, understand me, you pimp!”

Virgil bristled. “Don’t you threaten me, you little son of a bitch –”

Violence seemed imminent and Doc was watching, hoping for it. Then Wyatt jumped in, separating them. “All right, all right! Come on, easy, Virge, easy!” Morgan stood behind the McLaurys, ready to back his brothers up as they all rose. Ike began to back off, not about to face down all of them. Wyatt held Virgil back and they began to leave the table. “Just go on home and forget about it, huh Ike?”

Ike elbowed past them. “I ain’t gonna forget nothin’,” he grumbled, as he lurched to the bar to get another drink.

Doc looked disappointed. “Well, that certainly was a bust. Come, darlin’,” he said to Kate, “let’s seek our entertainment elsewhere.” He had begun to cough, attempting as always to hide the severity of it.

Wyatt whispered to his brother, “Forget it Virge, go on – get some fresh air.” He watched him leave, glad they had avoided a fight.

Doc stood slowly and shakily to his feet, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket.

Kate had begun putting his winnings into a black leather doctor’s bag but stopped in shock when Doc’s terrible cough seemed to tear through his throat. “What’s wrong, Doc?” she asked, fear in her voice. She moved chairs out of his way and grabbed his shoulder, trying to steady him.

Shaking his head, he struggled to remain on his feet, holding the handkerchief against his lips; it was bloodied by the next cough. “Nothing, not a thing. I’m right as the mail.” He stood for a second, and then crumpled, keeling over onto the floor on his back where he passed out.

Kate and Wyatt rushed to him at the same time. “Doc? Doc!” he called out, but the dentist didn’t respond; he had passed out. Morgan was at his side in seconds. “All right,” he said to his brother, “Get him up. Let’s get him to the hotel!”

Morgan helped him lift the unconscious man off the floor by his legs as Wyatt carried his limp torso. Kate got the rest of the pot into Doc’s bag and hurried to follow them out.

~ ~ ~

Morgan left after they got Doc onto his bed. Kate had told him she could take care of him, but Wyatt was loath to leave. Fully aware Doc wouldn’t have approved, he helped her get the unconscious man out of his clothes and into a long nightshirt. He lifted the doctor himself as Kate drew down the covers.

Watching her fuss over him, tucking the blankets to his chin, Wyatt felt at a loss. He’d known for a long time that the disease that ate at his friend was killing him. This was the first time he’d seen him so bad. It was a shock how light his body was, how frail.

“He’s skilled at pretending ... that nothing is wrong.” Kate’s whisper disturbed the quiet in the room. “He doesn’t like to discuss it or show what it’s doing to him.” She held herself tightly. “You’d better go. He won’t be pleased to find you here.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?”

She looked up at him. The horror and worry he felt was reflected in her eyes. “Pretend with him. That’s what I do.”

************************************************************  
October 26, 1881: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Kate  
************************************************************

“Your condition’s quite advanced,” the doctor explained, clearly choosing his words with care. “I’d say you’ve lost some sixty percent of your lung tissue, maybe more.”

Kate froze, trying to remain quiet. She stood on the balcony in her petticoat and corset, rolling a cigarette. Dr. Goodfellow’s assessment was shocking, despite what she’d told Wyatt Earp the night before.

Turning to peek inside the room, she saw Doc struggle to sit up more in bed. He looked like death, with his mouth open to gasp for air, his eyes bright with the pain of every breath. The doctor sat beside the bed, putting away his stethoscope.

She had sent for Goodfellow with Doc’s grudging consent after a racking coughing spasm had left him too weak to move. She’d seen the handkerchief before he could hide it – it had been full of blood and dark matter.

Doc’s manner was gruff in the face of the doctor’s diagnosis. He sipped tea from a china cup as if nothing was wrong. “What’s the verdict?”

“Two years, two days, hard to say. If you stop now – your smoking, drinking, gambling, your nightlife... You must have a healthy diet and most importantly, you need complete rest.”

Slow and careful, Doc set the cup and saucer on the nightstand. He fought not to cough as the doctor stood and continued speaking.

“What I mean is, you must attempt to deny your ... marital impulse.”

Doc’s expression was incensed, his tone a contemptuous threat as reddened eyes narrowed. “Get out of my sight.”

Goodfellow startled, took his bag and exited in a hurry, leaving Doc alone with the abyss. Kate entered, lit the cigarette, and went to his bedside. The moment he saw her, his expression changed – hiding the pain and the hopelessness.

“How you feeling, Doc?”

“Better.”

“That’s good. I knew it wasn’t nothing.” She took a puff and set the cigarette to burn in the ashtray on the nightstand she sat at his side.

“We must talk, darlin’. It appears, we must … redefine the nature of our association.”

She slowly peeled off her lace robe and gave him a quizzical look before leaning over him. “I’m a good woman to you, Doc. Don’t I always take care of you? Nobody cares for you like me.” Kate stroked him through the covers, her hand touching him just right, with practiced skill. “I’m a good woman.”

“Yes, it’s true. You are a good woman.”

Kate smiled, licking the cigarette after picking it up. She leaned in to put it between his pale lips, aware that her bosom was enticingly bare over her bodice. As Doc stared at her chest something behind his eyes seemed to shut down. He took a long drag from the cigarette before taking it from her to hold it in trembling fingers.

She knew how to skirt the problem they faced. It was a trick few whores would do, and respectable women knew nothing about – but she did. Kate slipped down his body, taking the covers with her. Pushing up the cotton nightshirt, she touched him with gentle hands and a ravenous mouth.

His voice, above her, tried to take what was happening in stride with his usual caustic wit. “Then again, you may be the Antichrist.”

Kate had done this only once before, after being told how by another girl. Most men didn’t even know to ask for it, and she was sure Doc was new to the experience. Yet she refused to allow him to fall into morose melancholy over the loss of pleasures she could still provide – without him overexerting himself at all.

When she finished, he gasped out as his back arched slightly. Trying not to choke or cough, he settled back down again, panting. Handing him a glass of whiskey, she watched him drink it down like a mother caring for a sick boy.

“Have you decided, Doc?” She sat down at his side and leaned over him again. “Am I an angel or a devil?”

“You are … manna,” he whispered. Moments afterward he had passed out again, but the lines on his face were smoothed into a more peaceful sleep.

She had just taken a swig of bourbon from his bottle on the nightstand, when a soft knock sounded on the door. Moving quickly, she pulled her lover’s nightshirt down and the covers up.

When she opened the door, Wyatt stood outside of it with his hat in his hands. Kate knew Doc wouldn’t appreciate her candor but Wyatt wasn’t going to accept anything less than the truth. With a heavy heart, she told him Doctor Goodfellow’s assessment and watched him turn away with haunted eyes.

_Two years, two days…_

**************************************************************  
October 26, 1881: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

Kate had called for Doctor Goodfellow to check on Doc when he woke that morning. When Wyatt saw her again, she had told him the news wasn’t good but she’d take care of him, as always. He had gone to join his brothers, knowing there was nothing he could do.

They had survived Virgil’s mad choice to become the town marshal and Morgan’s stupidity of becoming his deputy. Wyatt hadn’t been able to convince them to change their minds but they had handled it.

That morning, as they stood on the boardwalk in front of the jail and watched more of the outlaws ride into town, Wyatt couldn’t help but wonder how long their luck would hold. Ike Clanton was leading them, a coward who loved to start fights he couldn’t win – but many of the others were not so timid. Wyatt didn’t respond to the smirks and sneers turned toward them as the riders went by.

“Now there’re six of them,” Virgil said. “This is like a bad dream.”

Wyatt drank coffee and replied, “Just stay calm and use your head, it’ll be all right. Just the same though … guess maybe you better swear me in.”

Virgil turned his head to meet his gaze. Neither of them had to say a word.

When he’d shown up at home with a badge on his chest, Mattie had been equally silent. She sat up in quiet shock from her seat at the open window and watched him fetch his gun from the box in a drawer: Colt’s Revolver-Carbine .45 Buntline Special with a twelve-inch barrel. A plate on the side of the grip read, ‘To Wyatt Earp – Peacemaker. From the Grateful People of Dodge City. April 1878’.

He returned to the jail without speaking to her and she knew him well enough to know that he couldn’t be swayed, any more than his brothers had been.

~ ~ ~

They had been discussing the Cowboys that afternoon in front of the jail on Allen Street when they were interrupted by Mayor Clum.

“Those Cowboys’re tellin’ everybody in town they’re gonna clean you out. They’re back there in that lot, behind the O.K. Corral.”

“Thank you, Mayor,” Wyatt said, watching from the rocking chair as the man passed by. He had his feet up on the railing, weighing options as he tried to consider all angles. _At least Doc’s up in his room at Mrs. Fly’s – maybe he’ll sleep right through any trouble brewing._

As if conjured by the thought, they were shocked to see Doc coming down the walkway from Fly’s.

Wyatt was speechless, but Morgan called out to him, “What’re you doin’ out of bed, Doc?”

He didn’t look good; he wasn’t even dressed in his normal dapper clothes. A dark Inverness cloak hung from his shoulders over black trousers, suspenders, and a sweat-soaked gray shirt. He carried a black walking stick decorated with a heavy silver knob. His guns were the only part of his wardrobe that had been donned meticulously at all.

Wyatt stood, heart sinking, as he approached.

“What the hell’s going on?” Doc answered as he joined them. “I’ve had five people come up to my room telling me that the Clantons and McLaurys are gunning for us.”

Morgan interjected, “Are we going down there or not? What are we gonna do?”

Wyatt frowned. “Wait ‘til the liquor wears off. Once they start gettin’ headaches, they’ll lose interest.”

Virgil stood beside him holding a huge Stevens 10 gauge shotgun, and Wyatt knew it would be an ugly day. “Lose interest hell, they’re threatenin’ our lives.”

“You’ll never make that stick.”

“They’re carryin’ guns, Wyatt.”

“Virge, that’s a misdemeanor. You go down there to arrest ‘em, somethin’ goes wrong, maybe this time somebody really gets his head broke. You’ll have Cowboys comin’ around lookin’ for trouble from here to Christmas. You gonna risk all that over a misdemeanor?”

“Damn right I’ll risk it, they’re breakin’ the law.”

Hoping to keep him safe, he faced Doc. Half-dead and still drinking from a flask, his friend was sweating and unsteady on his feet. “It’s not your problem, Doc, you don’t have to mix up in this.”

An expression of genuine shock and hurt transformed Doc’s face; his red-rimmed gray-blue eyes turned hard and cold. “That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me.”

Caught by his reaction, Wyatt was stunned into silence as Doc moved to stand beside Virgil and Morgan.

Wyatt paused and looked down the street. When he turned back, he saw the resolute faces of men he loved more than life staring hard back at him. They wouldn’t be swayed. “All right, Virge, your call – but give Doc the shotgun. They’ll be less apt to get nervy if he’s on the street howitzer.”

Virgil traded the shotgun for Doc’s cane. Doc folded the shotgun under his cloak, a satisfied look in his eyes. They all stared at Wyatt, waiting for his cue.

He wanted nothing better than to turn this choice aside. “Well … come on.”

They started down Allen Street, footsteps stirring up swirling dust in an afternoon breeze. Virgil and Wyatt were out in front, Morgan and Doc in the rear. Others rushed with buckets beyond them to put out a fire that was blazing in a building before it could spread. It strengthened his impression that the whole town was slowly turning into a vision of Hell. Doc, perhaps comfortable there already, was whistling as they walked.

As they went, bystanders stepped aside, trading whispers behind them as they passed. Seeing them, Wyatt muttered, “How in the hell’d we get ourselves into this?”

From the side, Behan rushed up to them, holding up his hands. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, I just went down there and disarmed them.”

“You did?” Virgil said with disbelief. “Come on, boys.”

Behan trailed after them. “Gentlemen? I’m not going to allow any trouble!”

They ignored him as they turned onto Fourth Street. From there they entered Fremont Street, passing Fly’s studio and boarding house, to the alley and vacant lot where the Cowboys had gathered.

The lot was situated behind the O.K. Corral. Cammilius S. Fly’s Photograpic Gallery was on the left, with Harwood house and Jersey’s Livery Stable on the right. When the lot came into view, the men began fighting nerves. Their fists were clenched and they gritted their teeth, their eyes darting all over the street. Only Doc, bringing up the rear, looked like he couldn’t care less. He had even tipped his hat to his barber along the route.

Behan entered Fly’s gallery as the lawmen quickened their step. Seeing the approaching Earp party, the Cowboys glanced around at each other, setting themselves. Now at the end of the alley, the lawmen and Doc could see the Cowboys: Billy and Ike Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, Billy Claiborne, and Wes Fuller. They were still armed.

The four men in black slowed their step, gathering themselves. The Cowboys spread out. As the Earps got closer and closer, it seemed as if the very air was electric with tension. Yet as they stepped into the alley and fanned out for their final approach, they looked more like undertakers than lawmen, four tall figures in long black coats and cloak advancing in a line, grim and unstoppable.

When they came to a halt, the two groups faced each other with only twenty feet between them. Ike Clanton, hung over, had just dunked his head into a rain barrel. He stood frozen with the rest, water dripping from his face. The others looked tense – he looked terrified.

Virgil, the highest-ranking lawman, spoke first. “We’re here to disarm you. Throw up your hands!”

A weird moment of confusion settled over all of them, and no one seemed to know what to do.

Two clicks sounded in the silence: Doc had cocked both barrels of the shotgun one-handed as it waited at his side. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury reacted, slapping their hands to their guns. The Earps instantly tensed up, hands on their pistols.

Virgil stepped forward, his face set, holding up Doc’s cane in a fist. “Hold! That’s not what I want!”

In Wyatt’s memory, he was never sure if his brother was speaking to Doc or to the Cowboys. Doc shrugged his cloak off his shoulders as he raised the shotgun higher. His wide and wicked smile was spreading over his face.

Abruptly realizing what was happening, Wes Fuller bolted and dashed through a back gate into the livery stable. Right after him, Billy Claiborne ran away. Everyone else stood frozen, breath short, pulses pounding, each staring into the other’s wide-open eyes. Time seemed to stop.

Then Doc focused on Billy Clanton, the ‘music lover’ who had challenged him before. Between one heartbeat and the next, he winked at Billy.

Something in Billy Clanton’s eyes seemed to go dead and Wyatt groaned under his breath as the awful realization hit him. “Oh, my God...”

Billy and Frank jerked their pistols. Wyatt and Billy fired nearly at the same instant, and the narrow lot exploded in gunfire. Frank went down with a shot to his shoulder, but it wasn’t clear how badly he was hurt. Morgan fired, blowing Billy back against the wall of the Harwood house. Tom McLaury darted for cover behind his horse.

Ike ran forward when he saw his brother Billy shot. “Billy! Billy!”

Tom shot over his saddle at Doc who tried to return fire but was blocked by the horse. Doc shot one barrel into the air, the blast making the horse rear up, exposing Tom for a split second. Doc fired the other barrel, and Tom’s side exploded into red mist, the full charge of buckshot slamming him into the Harwood house. Tom dropped his gun and teetered into the street, taking eerie little mincing steps, already dead but still moving before he fell.

Ike turned away from his brother with his arms up. “Stop, no! Don’t shoot!” He rushed up to Wyatt, fell to his knees at his feet and grasped at him, shrieking, “No, no, please! I ain’t got no gun! Don’t shoot me, I ain’t got no gun!”

“Damn it, Ike, this fight’s commenced. Get to fightin’ or get away!” Wyatt hurled him aside.

Ike sprinted for the gallery, burst through the doors, and nearly fell inside.

Frank McLaury struggled back up, howling, and fired, the bullet piercing Virgil’s calf. He dropped to one knee and shot Frank, knocking him down again. Billy Clanton was wounded but back on his feet. He fired, dropping Morgan with a hole in his shoulder.

Wyatt aimed at Billy and hit him just before Doc dropped the empty shotgun and pulled his .38 Colt Lightning and began firing double-action, striking Billy three times in the abdomen. Together, they filled him with lead. He was dead before he fell.

The lot had been bathed in thick smoke in moments. Each man had jockeyed for position as gunshots rang out.

Inside the gallery, Behan had dropped out of sight but Ike Clanton had watched at the windows as his brother Billy was killed. Enraged and crazed, Ike snatched up a pistol from somewhere, probably Behan’s, and shot through the window, the bullet whizzing past Wyatt’s ear. “Billy! Billy!”

Wyatt spun around, enraged that Ike had gotten a gun, and called to Doc, “Behind us!”

In a flashing move that took less than a heartbeat, Doc pivoted with the .38 in one hand and drew his big .45 with the other before he could finish turning to face the building. He ran into the fray between Ike and Wyatt, rapid-firing fast and brutal. The bullets ripped through the gallery windows to shower Ike with splinters and broken glass.

Ike moved strangely as if someone was tugging at him. As Doc and Wyatt moved closer, Ike finally turned and dashed out a back door to run away.

Eyes wild and bulging, a bloody hand clutching the worst of his wounds, Frank McLaury staggered across the lot, bearing down on Doc through the smoke. Doc’s .45 clicked, empty.

Frank’s face turned to stone. “I got you now, you son of a bitch!”

Doc opened his arms, giving Frank a clear shot at his chest. “You’re a daisy if you do.”

Frank fired, the bullet grazing Doc’s holster, leaving a shallow wound across his upper thigh. Frank trudged closer, about to fire again, but Doc raised his .38 and fired low first at an angle – his last bullet. It struck beneath Frank’s right ear and up into his head. At nearly the same instant, Morgan fired from his prone position on the ground, the big .45 drilling Frank through the abdomen.

As the last shots echoed through the hills, Frank flopped limply to the ground like a rag doll. The fight, which seemed to last forever, was over in just under thirty seconds.

Wyatt went to his little brother. “Morgan? It’s all quiet now.”

He helped Morgan to his feet as Behan stepped through the gallery’s door and strode briskly back onto the scene. He was holding his cane, but his coat was long and Wyatt couldn’t see if he still had his gun.

“All right,” he said, addressing Wyatt, “all of you are under arrest.”

Wyatt approached, a fiercely intense expression on his sweating and dusty face. Feeling the threat, Behan tried to casually show the butt of his gun while moving a hand to his hip. Wyatt thought nothing of it – he could have picked it back up after Ike Clanton dropped it.

 _Did Ike take it or was it given to him?_ Cold disgust dusted his reply. “I don’t think I’ll let you arrest us today, Behan.”

Townspeople had run from their homes and shops to see what had happened. As more bystanders arrived, a crowd rapidly developed.

The Earp women ran up from the west end of Fremont. Josephine, in a purple dressing gown, exited the gallery and fought her way through the crowd until she and Wyatt caught sight of each other. He hadn’t known she was in there – it was a wonder she hadn’t been shot. She smiled with tears in her eyes, relieved to find him alive. He watched her with a bemused expression, unable to react.

Seeing the whole thing, Mattie turned and walked away while Allie and Louisa ran to their men, hugging them. Doc stood over Frank’s body, fingering the graze over his thigh.

Mayor Clum walked up to Wyatt with a stunned expression on his face as he surveyed the bloody scene.

“Guess we did our good deed for today, Mayor.” His voice was flat. They both knew nothing good would come of it. Clum shook his head and walked away.

His brothers’ wives and other townspeople were helping Virgil and Morgan. Doctors were called and a cart arrived to carry them home. Virgil still had Doc’s cane, now using it to walk as Allie assisted him. Behan had escorted Josephine away.

Wyatt felt the stare, glanced over at Doc, and a look passed between them: relief. With a small nod, he walked over to his friend and they left the massacre side by side, the sting of gunpowder in their nostrils.

He still held the Buntline Special at his thigh and the crowd parted wide for them both. Wyatt silently wondered what had happened and how it happened as he walked away. Keeping his family safe had just gotten a whole lot harder.

~ ~ ~

Wyatt went out onto the front porch where Morgan was sitting in one of the white wicker chairs watching as the funeral for Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury was marching into Boot Hill under a sign that read: Murdered on the streets of Tombstone.

Walking up to the railing, he drank his coffee as one of the Cowboys turned his head to look balefully across at him as they went by.

Ike Clanton, the man who had begged to him that he was unarmed and then took Behan’s gun to try to kill them from behind, was walking in the procession with a bunch of wildflowers in one hand. He had finally stopped running away long enough to remember that his brother hadn’t run.

With a sigh, Wyatt set the coffee on the small table and took the chair beside Morgan.

“You were right, it’s nothin’ like I thought,” his younger brother muttered. “I almost wish…”

“I know, Morg,” Wyatt answered, and then whispered, “I know. Me, too.”

He sat there long after the coffee was gone, the funeral was over, and Morgan had gone to bed. He sat until Doc Holliday came by, one hand on the railing. He had just begun to think about him, and so he had appeared.

“How is he?” Doc asked.

Wyatt sighed. It wasn’t in his nature to talk much, but Doc could always pull the truth out of him with barely an effort. “His eyes look like mine now. I tried to warn him killin’ would tear him up. But Virge and Morg, they love justice too much to let things be.”

“So did you, once.”

“I came here, and gathered them all here, to give up fightin’ for the law and be a family – a rich one. Now ... I don’t know. The Cowboys will never leave us alone.” Wyatt watched Doc a moment, struck by his calm stillness. “It doesn’t bother you a wit, does it, killin’ a man?”

“No.”

“It never would and never will. Why, Doc?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Wyatt. You’re blinded by the law, no matter how fixed on the good life you think you are. The law is in your blood. But you’ll never be free, be able to breathe, until you let it go and live for yourself.”

“I’d like to. I’d like to take my family and go, but it wouldn’t change anythin’. The Cowboys would follow.”

“And I’d be there waitin’ for them.”

A warm feeling flooded through him. He reached out to lay his hand over the other man’s, but Doc removed it from the railing. He was like that. Staring into those pale blue eyes full of chilled calm, he nodded instead, gratitude for his friend filling his throat. Echoing his simple words to Morgan, he whispered, “I know, Doc. I know.”

A tint of mischief glinted in those eyes that reminded Wyatt of the fireworks that had burst over Boot Hill throughout the funeral. That soft Georgia drawl filled the darkening sky, too.

“And I am willing to forgive your insult this morning, sir, provided you never repeat it.”

Startled, Wyatt wanted to explain: that he’d only tried to keep his friend safe, that Doc had been too ill to walk let alone to join in on an arrest bound to go bad. Yet he knew his protest would be useless. “Thanks, Doc,” he replied instead, shaking his head.

That morning, the man had been teetering on death’s doorstep. Fighting by their side, probably keeping them all from death, he had seemed immortal. Now, his cloak was draped over his thin shoulders and a wracking cough doubled him over. Doc took his flask out of his pocket and drank down a gulp of whiskey. Wyatt rose and reached down, afraid he might fall and ready to grip his arm.

Doc stepped away from his touch again, heading off down the street. “I don’t expect to see you at the Oriental tonight,” he drawled, as if they had been discussing the weather. “I’ll give the gents your apologies.”

Wyatt could do nothing but watch him leave.

**************************************************************  
January 17, 1882: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
**************************************************************

Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt walked down Allen Street together on a chilled afternoon. Wyatt reflected that the wounds were close to healed, if not the conscience. Christmas and New Years had passed peacefully but the quiet was too good to be true.

As they came level with the barber shop, Morgan saw young Deputy Breakenridge. “Hello, Billy. I say hello, Deputy.”

Breakenridge turned on them with a glare. “I don’t want to talk to you. Those

men you killed were my friends. I’m just a nothing, but if I wasn’t I’d fight you, I’d fight

you right now. So I don’t wanna talk to you.” He hurried away as the Earps looked on in amazement.

“All they ever did was make fun of him,” Wyatt observed.

Then a low and threatening voice interrupted them, punctuated by the sound of a glass bottle he’d dropped as it shattered at his feet. “Sister Boy should’ve stuck around.”

They turned to see Ringo, drunk, standing behind them on the street with murder in his eyes. His hands were poised beside the pockets of his long black buffalo coat, ivory gun butts peeking out.

Virgil spoke to the gunman in a wary voice. “What d’you want, Ringo?”

“I want your blood, I want your souls … and I want ’em both right now.”

“Don’t want any more trouble,” Wyatt said.

Ringo’s voice rose in a shout. “Well you got trouble! And it starts with you.” He stared Wyatt down.

Wyatt opened his coat, showing that he was unarmed. “I’m not gonna fight you, Ringo. There’s no money in it. Sober up. Come on, boys.” They turned toward the Oriental.

Ringo howled behind them, “Wretched slugs, don’t any of you have the guts to play for blood?”

“I’m your huckleberry.”

Doc was leaning against the white and red stripped barber pole. He must have been in the barber chair, unnoticed by any of them. One hand was held behind his back – and the handle of his .45 was not in its holster. His other hand was poised casually near the butt of the .38 that hung under his elbow. He stepped down into the street from the shaded porch in front of the barber shop, appearing like an apparition from the shadows into the light. His calm smile taunted the other man.

“That’s just my game.”

Ringo paused for a telling second, but then recovered and grinned like a wolf. “All right, lunger. You go to Hell. I’ll put you out of your misery!”

“Say when.”

Doc in his finery, the morning sun glinting on a red vest and diamond tie tack, faced off with the disheveled sweaty Cowboy. They faced each other, eyes blazing, both of them eager to begin a dance of death.

At the last possible instant, Curly Bill, Stillwell, Spence, and Florentino rushed into the street at Ringo from behind. Alarmed, the Earps stepped in front of Doc.

Stillwell and Spence held the struggling Ringo as Curly Bill yelled over his protests. “Johnny, don’t! Come on…” As they wrestled him away down the street, the leader of the Cowboys turned to the Earps. “Never mind him. He’s just drunk, that’s all.” He laughed at that, and it sounded like a threat.

They hauled Ringo off by force as he continued to fight them. Ringo yelled out, “Get off, get off!”

“Cool down, Johnny,” Stillwell said, barely able to control him.

Ringo yanked himself away from the others, almost falling into Curly Bill, who propped him up. “No! I want them spittin’ blood!”

“Easy, son, easy,” Curly Bill admonished him, “now ain’t the time.”

Stillwell grabbed him again. “Slow down, Ringo!”

Ringo jerked away from him and fell into the caskets on display outside the undertaker’s building and knocked them over. Tears in his eyes, clawing the air, Ringo was beside himself.

As they picked him up and led him away, Curly Bill spoke to the others, “I tell you, boys, even I’m worried what’ll happen once Ringo runs this outfit! God have mercy!”

Finished with watching the spectacle, Doc nodded to the Earps. “Gentlemen.” He returned to the barber’s chair on the porch of the shop, stretched, and sat down. “Barber?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Proceed sir.”

************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Kate  
************************************************************

Neither of them spoke for a long time, drinking in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Kate looked up and tried to give Wyatt a smile, but it was thin and brittle.

“When things calmed down after you all killed those men in that back lot, I tried to get Doc to rest more and for a while, he did. He got better again, but he was still weak. He might continue to get stronger or get sick again worse than before – I never knew which. That time, he got stronger, slowly. I heard about that morning with Ringo after. I wished Doc had killed him then – I know he could have.”

Those chilled light blue eyes warmed for a moment as the ghost of a smile seeped in only to slip away fast. “It wouldn’t have stopped them.”

“Assassination in thunder,” she whispered, catching his shudder before he could hide it. “So much grief.”

After another stretch of uneasy silence, Wyatt drank and muttered, “On Saturday, March 18, in 1882, Virgil was maimed and Morgan was killed. It was the worst day of my life – it made me not … want to live.”

Kate touched his hand and he allowed it, but his haunted gaze was looking far beyond the room they were in. “How did you?”

“Doc,” he whispered. “Half dead or on a rampage, take your pick, he wouldn’t let me just lie down and die. I had him and Virgil and the women to worry for. I had to protect what was left of my family.”

************************************************************  
March 18, 1882: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
************************************************************

After a long day and into the night, a storm moved in over Tombstone. Thunder shook the sky as lightning turned the town into a strange and frightening landscape of flickering shadows. The Oriental was closed and Wyatt and Morgan finished a late supper at the faro table as Virgil stood at a window and watched the storm. They were all tired.

“Gonna be one of those nights,” Virgil muttered as he took off his hat to rub his head. “It’s gettin’ late, boys, I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Goodnight, Virge,” Morgan said.

“Goodnight, Morg.” He gave Wyatt’s shoulder a pat as he headed for the door.

“Bundle up, Virge, it’s gettin’ cold out.”

Morgan started feeding some of his pasta to his dog. A few booms overhead shattered the still night. “That thunder’s sure gettin’ close,” he commented.

Wyatt got up to get more beer and was surprised to see their older brother return moments later. “Virge? What’d you forget?”

He turned away to sit back down to his meal as Virgil rounded the bar.

“Wyatt…” Then his brother fell, and he and Morgan scrambled to reach his side.

Their elder brother was pale, a blank look on his face. Horrified, they saw that his left side was covered with blood, the left arm dangling unnaturally.

~ ~ ~

“Would you hurry with that water, please!” the doctor implored.

“Come on, Lou,” Wyatt hurried Louisa in to help as she carried the water bowl.

Virgil lay on the couch of his home as Doctor Goodfellow tried to patch him up. Mattie, distressed and unable to cope, sat frozen on a chair at the table. Allie, sitting in tears at her husband’s side, attempted to comfort him.

Wyatt got out of the doctor’s way when asked to and tried to wipe his brother’s blood from his hands. Buckshot had ripped into Virgil’s side and left arm, and Wyatt later learned that the arm had been fractured up the length of the humerus bone with part of it shattered beyond repair.

Morgan called Wyatt over to stand by the window and door. A few people had come by with news of other attacks in town. His younger brother was angry, boiling for action. He could barely keep his voice level.

“They hit Clum’s house too, shot up his wife – his wife! Whoever heard of that! They’re bugs, Wyatt. All that smart talk about live and let live, there ain’t no live and let live with bugs!”

“All right, you listen to me, now. We gotta get outta here.”

“Get outta here? You listen to yourself, Wyatt. Lie down and crawl or might you get hurt, what kinda talk is that?”

“Do you see what’s happening, here?”

Allie’s voice rose in response to the doctor, “What? What do you mean, what are you saying? No, please no…”

Wyatt and Morgan rushed back toward the couch. Mattie had stood but was still frozen, unsure of what to do.

When Dr. Goodfellow began to speak, his voice somber, Allie’s hands rose to cover her mouth. “I’m afraid your husband’s going to lose the use of his arm…”

“Oh, God, no!” Allie started to sob.

Effected by her pain, almost more than his own, Virgil sat up and held her in his right arm. “No… Don’t worry, Allie-girl. I still got one good arm to hold you with.”

She buried her face in his chest and sobbed. Virgil held her, rocking her back and forth. Wyatt turned away, shutting his eyes.

In an instant, Morgan whirled and opened the door, shouting curses. “Sonsabitches!” He left the door open and ran off into the storm.

“Morgan, wait a minute!” Wyatt called after him, but then turned back to Virgil at the sound of his groan, torn between them. Mattie shut the door.

Allie rounded on him. “You had to be so damn smart.”

“I’m sorry, Allie, I told you… Virge?”

“Not now, Wyatt.”

“All right… What do you want me to do?”

“Leave me alone, for God’s sake.” Virgil grimaced in hopeless agony.

“Virge…”

Allie turned on Wyatt again, her tear-streaked face ablaze with anger. “He doesn’t want to talk now, Wyatt!” She turned away from them all, sobbing as the doctor began to cut away shattered bone.

Wyatt backed away. He looked to Mattie, standing by the door. She was out of it, high on laudanum and shaking with stress – there was no comfort for him there. Yet Morgan had run outside – into danger.

 _Where’s Doc? He left the Oriental before Virgil._ Trying to calm his shattered nerves, he reasoned that Kate would have come to him if Doc had been hurt. _He’s probably passed out in his bed and all the better for it._

Terror for Morgan drove him to act. He grabbed his hat and coat and rushed out the door. He stepped out of the house and into the street just as three men on horses rode up. Wyatt froze when he recognized Sherm McMasters, one of the Cowboys. He was flanked by Johnson and Vermillion. Their presence was the only reason he didn’t shoot the man out his saddle at first sight.

McMasters broke the stiff silence. “I heard what they did to your women. That was wrong. I’m here to let you know that it wasn’t me. I had no part of it.”

“No? Brothers to the bone, right, McMasters?”

“No. Not anymore, not after this night.”

Wyatt looked into McMasters’ eyes and saw that he meant it. The former Cowboy stripped off his red sash, dropping it on the ground.

“He’s right, Wyatt,” Johnson spoke up. “You want us for anythin’, we’re with you.”

He nodded curtly and they rode on. Wyatt picked up the sash just as the wind rose and it started to rain.

Another boom of thunder, covering what might have been a gunshot, snapped his attention toward the Oriental. It was likely where his brother had gone. Starting off for the saloon, he let the sash drop from his hand to blow curling down the street in the wind.

~ ~ ~

Morgan was placed on his side on the pool table as Dr. Goodfellow, called away after Virgil’s surgery, tried to dig the bullet out of his back with a metal probe.

“Hold him,” the doctor admonished.

Wyatt grit his teeth at the barking and howling of Morgan’s hound and desperately tried to hold his younger brother still as he writhed in agony, biting down on a bar towel.

A horrified crowd jostled outside, watching through the open doors. Louisa stood in the doorway in front of the crowd, soaked from the pouring rain and sobbing. Mattie and Milt Joyce, the Oriental’s barkeeper and owner, were holding her back as Mattie tried weakly to comfort her.

Wyatt held Morgan in his arms. The doctor probed deeper, and Morgan jerked violently. A sudden scream shocked them all. Louisa began to tear at her hair, lost in utter hysterics.

“Oh, no, get her out of here!” Wyatt shouted. “Somebody shut that dog up!”

Morgan convulsed violently again, breaking Wyatt’s grip. The doctor shouted, “I said hold him, damn it!”

Wyatt grabbed his brother again, as tightly as he could. “Somebody get that dog outta here!”

All at once, it was over. The doctor stepped away, shaking his head. “The bullet’s too deep, I can’t get it out.” He walked to Louisa. “The bullet is too deep in his back… I’m sorry.”

For the moment, Wyatt was merely relieved to allow Morgan to rest from his pain. He helped him to lie still and more comfortably. “Easy, Morg. Is that better?”

Morgan’s fingers flexed in Wyatt’s hold as his voice spoke in halting words. “You were right, Wyatt. They got me good. Don’t let ‘em get you, brother. You’re the one.”

“Easy, Morg. Don’t worry about that now.”

“Remember what I said about seein’ a light when you’re dyin’?”

“Yeah … yeah.” Wyatt stroked Morgan’s forehead with a bloody thumb.

“It ain’t true – I can’t see a damn thing.”

Tears welled up in Wyatt’s eyes. He touched his brother’s face as Morgan’s eyes fixed in a stare. Wyatt squeezed his hand. He heard the breath go out of Morgan’s body and felt his own spirit break as the dog started howling – long, loud, and pitiful.

“Morg? Morg? Morg!” He held his face and then leaned forward and kissed his temple. Almost in a panic, he got his hands free of the tangle with Morgan’s still fingers.

Wyatt held up his hands, bloody to the elbows, and stared at them. Backing away, he was passed by Louisa, who shrieked when she saw him, before running to Morgan. He paused when he saw Mattie, but she only recoiled from his bloody hands. Wyatt went out to the boardwalk and down to the street in a daze, instantly soaked in the heavy rain.

“Why?” he shouted. “Why him?”

Standing in the crowd across the street, Josephine saw Wyatt and started toward him. With the whole town watching, she ran to him in the middle of the street with her hands out, offering comfort.

Wyatt backed away from her in horror, shaking his head, his bloody hands in front of him. “No, no, get away, get away from me…”

“Wyatt,” she pleaded.

Wyatt knew she was in danger if they tried to shoot him. Panicked and desperate, he yelled at her, “Can’t you see? Get away from me!”

She paused a moment, unable to believe her ears, and then ran from him, crying. Feeling accusing eyes on him, he turned and saw Mattie standing in the rain behind him. She had witnessed the scene, too. She turned away from him to walk back into the saloon.

Wyatt trudged down the street alone. Abruptly clutching at his chest and abdomen in agony, he smeared blood on his white shirt. His pain erupted in a tortured scream, crying out his brother’s name into the storm.

************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Kate  
************************************************************

“I was terrified when he woke, after hearing you scream your brother’s name.” Kate held herself tightly. “He had passed out in his clothes. I was too drunk to get him to bed properly, so I fell asleep beside him in my chemise. He heard you, and woke up raving about revenge. He was out the door before I knew anything was wrong in the street. When I got my dressing gown on, I found your actress on the boardwalk. She told me what had happened to Morgan, but Doc had disappeared in the storm.”

“He was breakin’ the doors of private homes near Allen Street and the surroundin’ area when I heard about him causin’ trouble. Milt Joyce told me. In some ways, I guess I didn’t need to mess with him right then – but in others, dealin’ with Doc dragged my mind out of the black pit it had been pitched into.” Wyatt shook his head. “He was a sight to see. Looked like I felt, he did. Doin’ what I had wanted to do, too: lookin’ for Cowboys to kill. If he’d found any, we’d have had a shorter hunt later on, but they’d already gotten out of town. Didn’t see another one until the next afternoon, when we left town with … with Morgan.”

Kate studied him in silence. He was still affected by it all deeply, a fact which made him seem more of a man than less of one. Doc had taught her by his actions the meaning and value of loyalty, and though she’d spent a lot of time in her life cursing Wyatt’s name, she abruptly felt a kinship with him now.

His soul shined in his eyes as he looked at her through unshed tears. “I owed Doc a lot, all my life. For that – that insane night – I might owe him the most.” He frowned then. “Maybe right behind Ringo.”

“I heard Ringo’s body was found, but no one knew who killed him. Doc told me it was you, at first.”

Wyatt shook his head. “I could never have taken Ringo. Doc knew it, so he did it.”

Kate nodded. “I know. He told me the truth one night. It was the last time I spoke to him. He told me what happened.”

“I’ve wanted to know, if you’ll tell me. On the night Morgan died – I’d have gone mad if Doc hadn’t gone there for me first. Pullin’ him back from the brink … I guess I pulled myself back, too.”

“He was drunk enough and crazy enough to kill anyone that night.”

Wyatt nodded but wouldn’t be sidetracked. “What did he do when I dumped him back in your room at Mrs. Fly’s? I heard him speak once before I went out the door, but I didn’t understand him.”

“I didn’t either, and now I can’t remember what it was. One of his fancy quotes, probably.” She sighed. “He sat in the chair you dropped him in and drank himself unconscious.”

“At least he stayed put.”

Wyatt began telling her what he knew of that night, and she discovered that his recollection of the doctor’s words had been better than hers, even if their meaning was lost to both of them.

“When I screamed Morgan’s name in the street, I imagined I heard an answering cry, though no one could have heard it. I’m not a man given to flights of fancy, but I could have sworn it was Doc.”

“He didn’t make a sound,” Kate offered, but he rose from sleep like an avenging angel. That was the only night – even with all our fights – that I was ever afraid of him.”

“Me, too.”

************************************************************  
March 18, 1882: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
************************************************************

His cry of anguish had echoed in the heart of Doc Holliday, and no rational logic could sway him from that thought. Wyatt might have gone mad that night, if not for his friend. Yet his saving grace didn’t come in the form of comfort or the empty reassurance of hollow words. Doc had risen from sleep like the physical embodiment of Wyatt’s pain. Controlling his rages had brought Wyatt back to a sane mind, in a world gone mad.

~ ~ ~

The smash of another wooden door sounded down the street. Wyatt ran through the driving rain after the maddened Doc, hoping to catch him before he killed anyone other than a Cowboy.

A woman screamed and then a disheveled couple in night clothes fled their home through the shattered door. Before Wyatt could get there, Doc emerged with a pistol in each hand and murder in his eyes and heart. He rushed off to the next cottage without seeing Wyatt.

The marshal found him with his .45 pointed at a man’s head. He was on his knees before the doctor and looked like he’d been clubbed there. His wife, crumpled beside him and hysterically crying, held onto the sleeve of his nightgown.

“I swear, I don’t know them – we took this place when one of them moved out. Please,” he begged, “we don’t know where they are.”

“Doc!” Wyatt stood inside the hanging wreckage of the door. Doc turned instantly with both guns trained on the intruder. It wasn’t until much later that Wyatt realized how close he came to dying before his friend recognized him. “They’re gone, Doc. They’re all gone. Let these people be.”

“Wyatt…” He seemed dazed as he stared back at his friend. Both of them were soaked, and Wyatt’s white shirt was still blotched with Morgan’s blood.

Doc had endured another twenty-hour poker game and consumed more than a gallon of whiskey earlier in the evening in the Oriental. Kate had enticed him off to the boarding house while the Earps remained after the saloon closed to finish a late supper. Then Virgil had gone out into the storm.

Wyatt shook his head to chase away the horror in between that moment and this. He couldn’t afford to indulge in grief and rage with Doc on the loose terrorizing the town. If anyone else stopped him, they’d use a bullet – and if they were lucky, he might not see it coming.

That the man could stand and walk at all was a shock, but the fever inside him seemed to burn his weakness now rather than his strength.

When he took a staggering step back from the couple, Wyatt urged them away in a fierce whisper. “Run, now! I’ll deal with him.” The man grabbed his wife’s hand and they escaped in the rain.

“Wyatt … you don’t know,” Doc said between ragged breaths. “I saw one of them run this way from my window. After Morg … after Morgan…” He took another step backward, and then twitched and turned, seeing movement at his right. Whirling, he held his guns on a large mirror in the corner, where the image of him stood.

Wyatt approached carefully, mindful not to get too close too fast.

“You!” Doc challenged his reflection. “You lay in bed like a wasted slug, you fool. Wyatt could have … could have been…”

“Doc, please – you shouldn’t be out here like this.”

“Too late … for the young man, the smilin’ and lionhearted – but not too late for you,” he slurred.

Wyatt startled when the big .45 fired, shattering the mirror all over the room. Then the guns began to sink down to his sides. Doc’s reflection had a jagged wooden hole through its middle, with a bullet hole through the wood. He hadn’t even flinched when he was showered with glass. Two small cuts had nicked him, on the back of his hand and the side of his neck.

“Still you stand,” Doc whispered, staggering. “You unconscionable bastard…” He fell abruptly and crumpled to his side on a field of glass. Every fragment reflected pieces of him, like a symbol of his soul.

Wyatt rushed to Doc’s side, fell to his knees, and eased him up to lean against him.

The guns slipped from his pale fingers and clunked to the floor. For a moment, he seemed sure to pass out, but then he saw Wyatt’s blood-soaked and sodden shirt. He started to struggle against his friend’s grip, but Wyatt held him firmly.

“Be easy, Doc – I’ll get ‘em, I swear it, but they’ve all gone now.”

Doc’s strength and resistance failed him all at once. He reached out with trembling fingers to touch the bloody shirt, his palm pressing the cold cloth against Wyatt’s skin. He watched his hand rise and fall with his friend’s breath.

“You’re not shot,” he whispered.

“No. They had too many witnesses by the time I entered the street.”

“Morgan…”

“I’d kick this town to bits with you if I thought they were hidin’ here. They’ve run for it, at least for now.” Wyatt took a deep breath. “When I get ‘em, I have to do it legal, but if you don’t regain your senses, you’ll end up… I can’t lose you, too, Doc. I just can’t.” His fingers knotted into fists in Doc’s soaked suit jacket.

They sat silently in the shards of the ruined mirror. Wyatt could feel where some of the pieces had cut his knees. He welcomed the pain. It was proof that he was still alive – and hadn’t yet fallen down into the black abyss at his core.

He shook himself out of the waking nightmare of his thoughts when he felt a violent shudder tear through Doc’s thin frame. His head was on his shoulder, his hands holding the bloody shirt against Wyatt’s ribs.

Doc was already weakened and ill with consumption. If he ended up sick from sitting here cold and wet, it wouldn’t help his condition. Wyatt stirred and roused Doc out of his stupor.

“I’ll get you back to Kate,” he whispered. Wyatt struggled to his feet, and then hauled Doc up. “I’ve heard you could start a fight in an empty room,” he muttered as he bent to pick up the guns. Holstering them, he straightened Doc’s coat over them again.

“Where is he?”

Wyatt didn’t have to ask who he meant. The pain constricted his heart again. “With the undertaker.”

“I want to see him.”

“Doc, you need to be in bed.”

“Wyatt, I am going – and to Hell with you if you try to stop me.”

Arguing with Doc was useless. Wyatt helped steady him on the way, his thoughts fragmenting like the mirror. _Is Louisa all right? No, her husband is dead. And Virgil – Virgil will never use that arm again._

They found the undertaker awake. He let them in to see Morgan where he’d been laid out. He was still in the ruined clothes he’d worn in the saloon. Wyatt and Doc abruptly changed roles, with Doc supporting Wyatt as the sight of his brother hit him again like a fist in the gut.

“I am so sorry, Marshal,” the tall man in black said. Wyatt knew him well, but his brain wouldn’t give up the man’s name as it dimmed in grief. “And for your brother Virgil, please offer my sympathies if you would. He is a decent man, served most foul tonight with the rest of your family.”

“Virgil?” Doc asked. “Wyatt, what happened?”

“We were ambushed. They used the thunder … to mask the sound of the bullets. One of them went to Virgil’s cottage, where our wives were; he tried to shoot them all. Josephine Marcus went there to warn them and saved Allie’s life when she opened the door. But Virgil … he left the Oriental to go home and they shot him, maimed his left arm. We were there with Dr. Goodfellow when Morgan … left.”

Wyatt dropped into a chair beside the door to the room, his head in his hands. Doc approached Morgan’s body. When he spoke, Wyatt looked up.

“The lion heart,” Doc whispered. “A prince of a boy; he should be dressed as one.” He glanced at the undertaker and then back to Morgan’s still face. “I shall have a suit brought for him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Doc leaned over and kissed Morgan’s brow. “You sleep now.”

Wyatt couldn’t remain in the room any longer. He lurched to his feet and went out. A moment later, Doc joined him on the walkway. They watched the rain fall beyond the cover of the building’s second story.

“They’re dead,” Doc said. His soft voice held a tone of steel. “Every one of them. They just don’t know it yet.” A coughing fit interrupted him and he pulled his flask from his coat, drinking deeply and weaving on his feet.

“One against one hundred?” Wyatt set his fist against a post on the porch and leaned his forehead against it, his eyes closing. “Vermillion and Johnson said they’d help. They had McMasters with them; he’s left the Cowboys. So that makes four.”

“Five.”

“Doc, no…”

“When has that word ever worked on me, Wyatt?”

“This thing could kill you.”

“And you’re immortal? Are they?”

“There’s more.” Wyatt turned his head slightly and regarded his friend. “You made me remember tonight that I’m not ready to die yet. When I do this, I intend to do it legal, I told you that. So when it’s finished, I won’t swing for it myself. You’ve never wanted anything to do with the law.”

Doc approached with the deliberate steps of a predator. All appearance of drunkenness left him in an instant. The change was so startling that Wyatt reacted by turning to put his back against the post, his eyes widening.

The doctor’s free hand lifted and pressed the cold metal of the deputy marshal badge against Wyatt’s chest. Beneath it, his heart began to beat wildly.

“Feel that, Wyatt. That is ‘the law’ that I’ll risk what’s left of my life for. Tear the tin away – it’d be the same.”

He stepped back without warning and Wyatt stumbled away from the post. Lifting the flask again, Doc must have nearly emptied it in one pull. Like a mask, the air of fogged inebriation fell over his face again. Wyatt shook his head, unsure if it was real or not.

As he watched him, almost warily, Doc stepped off the boardwalk into the rain and turned to face him again, swaying alarmingly in the street.

“I’ll take that escort now,” he said with a slur. “I’d hate to add mud to the rain that’s ruining this suit.”

Wyatt was at his side instantly, giving his friend his arm. He couldn’t speak, but Doc didn’t seem to require any acknowledgement of his words or of his odd declaration.

On the way back to Mrs. Fly’s boarding house, it became obvious that Doc hadn’t faked his drunkenness. Wyatt was tempted to carry him but knew better than to court his offense at such an indignity. As it was, he nearly had to in order to get him up the stairs to his suite.

On the way back to Mrs. Fly’s boarding house, it became obvious that Doc hadn’t faked his drunkenness. Wyatt was tempted to carry him but knew better than to court his offense at such an indignity. As it was, he nearly had to in order to get him up the stairs to his suite.

~ ~ ~

Kate stood in the dark by the bed dressed in a thin chemise and robe, silent and subdued by the frightful state of the men as they made their entrance. Wyatt helped Doc into an embroidered armchair beside the window. Facing him, he winced.

He looked dreadful – worse than he’d ever seemed before. Red-lined bloodshot eyes stared back at Wyatt until another racking cough ripped through him.

Pale, sweating, and feverish, he reached for the flask in his breast pocket. He held the cap in the fingers of one hand, the flask in the other, and emptied it in one drink.

Wyatt tried to reassure Kate, but his tongue failed him. He moved to the door as Doc began to speak in a slurred and broken voice. The words had the poetic cadence of one of the classics the doctor was known to quote from memory.

“They have circled round him thrice. ‘Close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew hath fed ... and drunk the milk ... of paradise...’”

His head fell back against the chair as he passed out. The empty flask and cap clattered to the floor, but it didn’t rouse him.

Wyatt stared at his friend’s silhouette in the chair for a long moment. Doc had seemed to feel both Wyatt’s pain and his anger to an excess the marshal couldn’t afford to indulge in. Whether helping him walk or accepting his help, Doc had been his strength. When they took Morgan’s coffin on the train to their parents in Colton, California for his burial, he would be dressed in one of Doc Holliday’s suits.

“If you could give him your life, you would, wouldn’t you?” he asked his friend’s unconscious form. _As you took the weight of my burden from me._ Wyatt’s whisper had brought Kate out of the shadows. “Please take care of him.”

She nodded gravely. Wyatt turned away and closed the door.

************************************************************  
March 19, 1882: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
************************************************************

The wagon bearing Morgan’s pine coffin waited in the street in front of the O.K. Corral, hitched and ready. It was the focus of all onlookers along both sides of the street.

Virgil held the reins of their covered wagon behind it. He sat up front with Allie, his left arm in a sling. He was pale as a ghost as he watched Wyatt checking the ropes that secured the coffin.

Observed by Kate from the balcony close by, Doc assisted Mattie up into the back bench seat beside the weeping Louisa. Mattie’s face was distant but she tried to hold the younger woman and comfort her.

Finished loading, Wyatt looked around. People lined the street everywhere, watching in silence. The air around them felt charged with paranoia and recrimination.

The bystanders stared, all eyes turning, as Josephine Marcus stepped out of the hotel. She was regal and impervious as a queen in her gray satin gown, wearing indifference like a mink coat and holding a white lace parasol. Passing Wyatt, she didn’t even glance at him or break stride as she crossed the street.

Doc stood behind Wyatt as they watched her disappear. Doc sighed, stating with somber drama, “And so she walked out of our lives forever.”

Without a word, Wyatt climbed onto the wagon and shook the reins, driving off. Doc watched him go.

A few feet down the street, he pulled up in front of the Cowboys and stopped the wagon. Virgil stopped his beside it.

Lounging in front of the Crystal Palace with their cronies, Curly Bill and Ringo were seated in white wicker chairs, watching the Earps. They all wore their guns on their hips.

Wyatt kept his eyes straight ahead. “I want you to know it’s over.”

Curly Bill managed not to smile. “Well … ‘bye.”

Beside him, Ringo sniffed the air, wrinkling his face. “You smell that, Bill? Smells like someone died.”

Stifling a laugh, he replied, “Damn, Johnny…”

Virgil’s eyes flared as Louisa sobbed behind him. The Cowboys snickered. Wyatt clenched his teeth, stared straight ahead, and drove on with Virgil following.

Doc’s words echoed in Wyatt’s head. _‘They’re dead – they just don’t know it yet.’_ The words, and the plan he’d already set in motion, allowed him to leave them unharmed with their sly smiles and barely concealed hate. _I won’t see your coffins, but I’ll see your blood on the ground. My boots will be caked with it._

************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Kate  
************************************************************

“How did you hunt the Cowboys down?” Kate asked.

“It was McMasters. He knew all their haunts and hidin’ places. Without him…” Wyatt shook his head. “He broke with ‘em over what happened, over them tryin’ to shoot our wives, after they shot my friend Clum’s wife. But they got McMasters in the end. He assumed they had a shred of honor. I told him not to go…”

“You sent Mattie with your brother to California?”

“Yes. From the train station in Tucson, where it had all started – in a lot of ways.”

Kate could tell Wyatt was deciding how much he should tell her about what they did after they left Tombstone. “I didn’t want Doc to go,” Kate interrupted his thoughts.

“I know. If I’d had a choice, he wouldn’t have. I hope you know that. He didn’t give me a choice about his company anymore than he gave you a say about him leavin’.”

“I know that now, but then … I was very angry, and I hated you for a long time.”

“Hated me?” he asked, surprised. “Why?”

“For being more important to Doc than I ever was. He – loved you more than me, if he ever cared for me at all … but you, he loved.”

Wyatt seemed stunned speechless. She told him of finding Doc in the livery stable, not long after the Earps had left town. He had told her he was going, but she hadn’t believed it until she saw him saddling his horse. They had exchanged harsh words and he had thought she didn’t understand, but she did, only too well. With his leaving, she finally understood how little he really needed her. The memory of his impatient cruelty still burned.

**********************************************************  
March 20, 1882: Tombstone, Arizona Territory – Kate  
**********************************************************

Doc had been smoking as he saddled his horse. Kate entered the dim stable in a fury. “It’s Wyatt, isn’t it? It’s always Wyatt.” She stormed up to him. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she got between him and his horse, stopping him from cinching its girth tighter. “Why?” She tore his cigarette from his lips and threw it down. “Why is he so much?”

“Kate, try to understand. The man has given up everything to do what he must.” He turned to fetch his rifle. “Now if I call myself his friend, then...” He faced her again, taking in her angry and closed expression. “Oh, never mind.” Taking the rifle back to the horse, he slid it into its sheath on the horse’s other side, avoiding Kate.

He continued to pack the saddlebags, stifling a cough. For now, he was able to control it but it served to remind them both that he wasn’t up to the trek he planned to make on Wyatt’s behalf.

“I don’t understand,” Kate answered, breaking her stiff silence. She moved behind him and leaned against his back, clinging to him as he secured his packing. “I’m your woman. You get killed, where does it leave me?”

Doc turned his head to answer her over his shoulder. “Without a meal ticket, I suppose.” He dislodged her and turned away, leading the horse out.

“You bastard!” She followed him, seething with fury.

“I’m leaving now, darlin’.” Doc mounted his horse as he spoke. He managed it with his trademark grace, stifling another cough.

Kate rushed to his side, angry as a spitting cat. “You bastard! Don’t!” She was crying as she hit his leg and side hysterically with her fists, but his cultured aplomb seemed unruffled, his decision irrevocable.

He stared down at her, his gray-blue eyes shadowed under his hat. “Have you no kind word to say to me before I ride away?”

Kate turned her back on him, crossing her arms over her chest in a pout.

Doc choked with emotion, and then tried to hide it in a stifled cough. “I calculate not.”

Kate turned back to him with a fierce incredulous look. She reached out to him again, but he tipped his hat to her and rode off, making her stumble as the horse launched out from under her hands.

“Doc!” she screamed after him, her voice changing to a begging and desperate tone.

************************************************************  
November 8, 1887: Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Kate  
************************************************************

“He never looked back. Not once.”

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt whispered.

Kate shook her head at him. Frustration, old jealousy, and sympathy warred in her heart. “I believe what you said about not wanting him to follow you – that he refused to stay behind. But you wanted him with you, didn’t you? Even if it killed him.”

“No.” His startled expression mollified her a little. “I … always enjoyed his company. He was the only one besides Morgan who could ever make me laugh, most of my life. He not only saved my life back in Dodge City but out on the trail, too. If he hadn’t been there when Ringo challenged me, I’d be long dead. Sometimes his courage and strength were all that kept me on my feet when rage and grief left me exhausted.”

Wyatt’s fingers went still on the table where before they had tapped with nervous caged energy, even as he held his body still on the chair. When he spoke again, it was barely above a whisper.

“Doc’s loyalty was a gift, though I’ve never known how I earned … or deserved it.” He reached out to touch her hand as it lay on the table beside Doc’s stirrup cup. “But I swear to you, Kate – even though it would have meant the end of my life – if I could have made him stay in Tombstone with you, or anywhere, where he could have rested and … and lived… I would have.”

Kate turned her hand to lace her fingers in his. She sighed. “It’s just so hard to give him up. I did it often, of course, but we always ended up together again. No matter how much we fought, there were so many good times, too. Life with Doc was never boring, either way.” She held his gaze as a soft smile tugged at her lips. “But we both know you’d have had to kill him to keep him from following you.”

Wyatt’s answering smile was hesitant and died before it bloomed. He released her hand to pour more whiskey for them both. “Did you leave Tombstone the same day?”

“No.” Her fingers toyed with the silver cup. “Doc had left Mrs. Fly’s, but he’d paid up the suite for another week, for me.” She lifted the cup to her lips and for one instant she missed him more than she thought she could bear.

“He was a good man,” Wyatt answered. “Not many would say so, but I always swore on it.”

Kate nodded and finally sipped, setting the cup down again. “I stayed there for that week and then I took a stagecoach to Texas. I had to work again.” She smiled bitterly. “Doc always disapproved. He wanted me to be only his. Most of the time with him, I was. Maybe he spoiled me. When we met again here, I was ready to resume our relationship. Doc would never say if we had or not, and we barely saw each other. Then I heard about his collapse at a poker table. I thought that when he asked me to come to see him, it would be okay, but he never did.”

“I’m sorry, Kate,” Wyatt said again. “He was a very private and proud man. I wasn’t invited, either. I just went, and the nurses couldn’t throw me out.”

Kate drank down the whiskey and felt it burn her throat. Seeking a distraction from her thoughts, she asked, “Tell me what you all did after Doc left me. You were going to tell how you hunted the Cowboys.”

Wyatt put his elbows on the table and leaned his chin on his folded hands. “I had seen a few judges before I met the others. I wanted the manhunt to be legal.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Morgan’s coffin was loaded onto the train for California, and the others came up to me after I killed Stillwell and sent Ike Clanton runnin’ like the worthless dog he was.”

***********************************************  
March 20, 1882: Arizona Territory – Wyatt  
***********************************************

The Tucson train station at night looked like a scene in a macabre play. The train to California poured steam onto the platform in puffs and clouds as two porters loaded Morgan’s coffin into a boxcar.

Wyatt lifted his eyes from the hellish vision to see his brother Virgil sitting in the window of the nearest passenger car. Allie sat beside him. Mattie was in the window seat behind them with the weeping Louisa at her side. No tears adorned Mattie’s face. Wyatt looked away from them to watch the platform and the surrounding darkness.

His vigilance was rewarded almost instantly as Ike Clanton emerged from the shadows near the scales with Frank Stillwell right behind him. They had exchanged nods before starting forward, cocking the shotguns held in front of them.

Stillwell squinted through the steam as they met at a lamppost. “That’s Virgil with the women.”

Ike grimaced. “He’s mine.” He raised his weapon as a man’s voice called out for all to board.

Hey, Mattie!” Stillwell called, to get their attention. “Where’s Wyatt?”

“Right behind you, Stillwell.”

They spun in time to see him behind them and Stillwell fell dead in a heap, his torso a smoking bundle of bloody rags, before Ike realized he was staring down the twin barrels of Virgil’s big 10 gauge shotgun. Screaming, Ike fell to his knees in an instant, dropping his shotgun and throwing his hands in the air.

“No!” His pathetic begging as the train began to pull out was audible to everyone around them.

Wyatt raised his hand with an uplifted index finger to Virgil, counting off one down and dead. Virgil lifted his hand in farewell and then fisted it to show he understood. Train 5150 carried them away to their parent’s farm were they could recuperate and Morgan would be laid to rest. Yet they would see to that without him. Wyatt had more to do in Arizona.

Kicking Ike’s shotgun over closer to Stillwell, Wyatt pointed his at Ike’s head where the man was groveling at his feet. Lifting the Cowboy’s chin with the toe of his boot, he turned the heel to put the spur against Ike’s mouth. With a quick jerk of his foot, he cut the side of his mouth badly, widening it by an extra inch.

Turning as Ike bled and sobbed, he heard his friends approach from the station. Doc walked up through the steam clouds like the devil, with Sherm McMasters, Texas Jack Vermillion, and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson with him in a line. Behind them was Mayor Clum, solemn and silent.

“Alright, Clanton, you called down the thunder, well now you’ve got it.” He opened the lapel of his long black coat to show the silver star. “You see that? It says United States Marshal.”

“Wyatt, please don’t kill me… Please, please!” Ike shrank away from him, rolling half onto his hip with hands still up at his chest.

Nodding to Stillwell’s corpse, he ordered, “Take a good look at him, Ike – ‘cause that’s how you’re gonna end up.” With a boot on his chest, Wyatt shoved him down onto his back. “The Cowboys are finished, you understand me? I see a red sash, I kill the man wearin’ it. So run, you cur. Run!”

Ike began to crab walk backward before he finally struggled up to his shaking legs and stumbling feet. As the pathetic coward started to run, Wyatt called after him, his voice rising into a mad howl of rage.

“Tell all the other curs the law is comin’ – you tell ‘em I’m comin’! And Hell’s comin’ with me, you hear? Hell’s comin’ with me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History and facts clash badly with Wyatt Earp’s biographer Stuart N. Lake and dime-novelist E.Z.C. Judson, a.k.a Ned Buntline, on the subject of Wyatt’s gun. Others have stated that Wyatt used a Smith & Wesson American at the O.K. Corral. Since this story is based on the film, I’m sticking with Lake and Judson’s claim of the Buntline Special, even though I agree it was probably pure fiction to sell books.
> 
> Another area where fact and fiction clash is the exact events, wounds, and who-shot-what of the gunfight with the Cowboys, so I’m using a mix of movie canon and investigated facts. Doctors post-mortem reports and witness testimonies are a great source, but some of those facts are glossed over or changed in the film. Facts suggest Doc killed Frank McLaury with a shot under his ear that when up horizontally into his brain, nearly at the same time that Morgan shot him. Frank only had two major wounds, ear/head and abdomen. The movie added a shot to his shoulder. The movie sets it up to look like Morgan was the one who made the head shot. For this, since I’m writing it for Doc, I’ve stuck with fact over film. I lost count of how many times I poured over the gunfight scenes while writing. I ended up having to pick and choose what to portray and how a few times. If anyone prefers the narrative that Morgan got the head shot, feel free to stick with that.
> 
> The scenes of Wyatt and Doc on the night of Morgan’s death were part extras and part my additions. I’ve also rearranged the deleted scene of Doc reciting lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem "Kubla Khan" to happen after Wyatt brings him back to Kate, instead of at the moment of Wyatt screaming Morgan’s name in the street. The scene of Doc leaving Kate on a horse was in the deleted scenes. I just added a few paragraphs to Act One to describe the fight Wyatt had with Mattie over Josephine. It is from a deleted scene and I wasn’t sure where it originally happened in the story, so I only allude to it as Wyatt is reflecting on how he felt about Mattie and Josephine in talks with Kate in Colorado. I’ve researched the film as closely as I could, so if I missed anything, historical fact, cinematic detail, or typo, I’ll fix it when I find it. Thanks for reading! - AnonGrimm (@MET_Fic)


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